I hope everybody who talks about carbon trading reads this post.  It is one of the most important posts I've read!  We need to wake up, and understand the true consequences of our choices.  Carbon Offsets always had the stink of spending and consuming our way out of a problem caused by how we spend and consume.

   Thanks Gar!

patrick

  I wrote trading, then looked at it, changed it to offsets, and some how still ended up with trading...

  An error beyond my usual voluminous spelling mistakes!

patrick

Planting trees is a good idea, but you need to consider where.

If they're killing trees to plant trees, that's not an offest. It's a net loss. If they're replacing farmland with a forest, and it gets returned to farmland in a couple years, that's pretty irrelevant.

What we need is to replace more useless land with trees. And that isn't found in developing nations or the tropics. It's in our yards. We need to replace our lawns with trees. It isn't going to stop global warming - but it may slow it a little, and may create habitat for wildlife. We can't afford to avoid doing the little things that help like that - but people need to remember those are the little things, that help, but don't solve the problem.

Of course, the same goes for biofuels. They may be a renewable resource, but if they're replacing forest, they're contributing to global warming.

Thank you for this information. As a small business owner and subscriber to Grist I've thrown money at planting trees in order to make up for the areas where my green business falls short. Of course most of my ecological shortcomings are due to the fact I live in an apartment and have little or no control over my living space but that's a whole other discussion.

I now look at the concept of carbon offset in a whole new light.

Banana Republican

>We need to replace our lawns with trees. It isn't going to stop global warming - but it may slow it a little, and may create habitat for wildlife.

This is an interesting point. If you just look at sequestration, the lawn sequester more carbon if you are outside the tropics. But the tree uses less water, fewer pesticides. Given that most lawns are mowed by electric or gas mowers, not hand mowers, there is substantial energy spent in mowing them. And tress planted near the house may reduce climate control energy as well - depending on how carefully they are located. So when these efficiency means are considered, trees may well contribute more to fighting global warming than a lawn. Even if not the difference has to be insignificant, and the reductions in water and pesticide use more than outweigh that difference, even if it favors the lawn. In short, it is hard to say whether trees are better than a suburban lawn strictly in terms of fighting global warming. But there is not doubt that it is better for the environment as a whole.

ChicEarthMuffin

>As a small business owner and subscriber to Grist I've thrown money at planting trees in order to make up for the areas where my green business falls short.

OK - couple of points.

GHG emissions are ultimately a social problem. While it is important to do what we can, it is also important not to feel guilty for not being able to single handedly make up for the fact that we live in a society that use resources in an extremely wasteful way. There is real potential for individuals to reduce waste. But past a certain point just living in a rich careless country means it is unavoidable for you to consume some stuff made wastefully.

In terms of offsets, I advise against trying for a carbon neutrality that - in the absence of collective action - is really impossible for anyone but the extremely rich or the extremely poor. Instead take the money you would have spent on offsets and donate it to some cause you think will do good work on this issue. It could be a non-profit  group that helps provide insulation, efficient appliances, or even renewable energy to low income groups. Or it could be a political group who you trust, that is active on this issue. You don't get a quantity of carbon credits to boast of - but that is meaningless anyway. In its place you are donating to some cause you are excercising you own  judgement about.

The concept of trading reductions is fundamentally flawed.  When you reduce something, it ceases to exist in its previous quantity.  Simply stated, a tons of "reductions" is a ton of absolutely nothing.  It is equivalent to the Big Zero.  

However people are running around saying that reductions do exist, like SO2 or CO2 being -100 tons.  How can you have negative CO2?  Is it some form of anti-matter?  

Watch out, Ross Perot, that Giant Sucking Sound isn't coming from Mexico but from the ... gosh I hate to say this ... then environmentalists and the capitalists who participate in the trading programs.  I hate to offend those trading companies, many of who have firm environmental credentials and goals, but it is still trading in ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Think about it.  I can get you a ton of oxygen, nitrogen, or CO2 and deliver it to your house.  You can't fill up a truck with reductions, though.
/sammie

Onward through the fog

... for carbon offsets through tree planting specifically, I just think that the recent modeling study that came out (the one that suggests that albedo effect is the biggest driver in carbon balance of forests) is flawed, or realistically very incomplete.

I will not go to the point of suggesting that the modeling study is bunk or seriously flawed, I just do not see how it is a legitimate 'proof' that we should not conduct tree planting.

Furthermore, I think it is ironic that Gar rallies behind this study (which is, once again, incomplete, but points to albedo in the higher latitudes as negating carbon storage), and the social aspects of planting trees in the tropics. These are the only examples that he actually produces, and these areas are exactly where forests should be regenerated, essentially creating a very confused logic: we should plant trees in the tropics, but we can't because of the people down there, and we can plant them up here, but we shouldn't, because albedo is the problem.

Tree planting in some cases conflicts directly with human well-being, it is true, but the reason is mostly due to overpopulation issues, not inherent problems with the forests. In many cases planting (and specifically forest restoration within an appropriate social context, since that is what I am arguing for, not blind planting) will only benefit the locals. By the way the Coldplay mango trees have benefited the successful locals that now have mangos.

Also, tree planting on 'degraded' land is an appropriate technique, specifically if the trees or shrubs are facilitative or 'nurse' organisms, in that they provide the appropriate habitat for older successional communities to develop.

Reductions do exist: a factory can produce 100 tons of CO2 and make $10000 doing it or it can either invest in technology that would eliminate those tons or quit creating as much output and receive $10000 doing that.

You have a conceptual problem with negative numbers, which should preclude you from writing on the topic, but apparently it has not.

The question is not whether negative are possible, but whether they are exact enough to be given numbers. For example, perhaps the factory owner is about to cut production in any case due to a falling market, and takes the credits as a bonus. Of course the factory owner could be given incentives to reduce emission via a carbon tax. And that tax could be placed at the point of production of fossil fuels where it is more measureable.