I will bet that all their offsets are the purchase of 25 cents seedlings from the National Forest Service and planted. Probably 50% of these seedlings will grow to maturity and many will find themselves diseased or damaged in weather events enough to kill them within the first 10 years.

Much in the way a clear cut is authorized to happen as long as they replant saplings.

Only to have them all wither and die after they were planted.

which is:
If she had the time and resources, Wilson...says she would have tried to "stop [the plant] dead in its tracks."

Talk is cheap. Offsets exists precisely because time and resources are limited for all of us.

The linked article was high on morals and short on details, but a few seem important:
Texas is not a painless place to rein in polluting industries, and battles fought in court can be insanely expensive, with victories far from guaranteed. I'm not suggesting that stopping mighty coal is another easy day in the office. But giving coal the green light should never be done, even on the hardest terrain. No new coal means no new coal, regardless of the corporations' concessions.

I see she's read the Charge of the Light Brigade...

In this case, the concessions seem grand. NuCoastal has agreed to offset 100 percent of its mercury reductions by reducing emissions by 80 percent and purchasing mercury emissions credits. The corporation has also promised to offset 100 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions through a variety of credible-sounding avenues: funding energy efficiency programs, shutting down a comparable source of emissions, building wind turbines, or investing in carbon sequestration equipment.

So, rather than get concessions from the company, they should pour valuable resources into a lost cause?

There's a time when direct, symbolic action will be strategically effective. But there's also a time when it will bear high costs and low returns, and the best course of action would be to pursue your efforts elsewhere. From the information supplied in this article, it's impossible to say that that occurred in this instance, but it seems quite plausible.

Let's assume that they were powerless to stop the plant: they got their concessions, and freed up resources to pursue more effective strategies, like, say, pressing for a moratorium, rather than fighting each plant individually. How on earth could that be: a) an indulgence, or b) a bad thing?

Only if it could be proved that a deathmatch would yield a net positive result. Can you do that, Gar? Until we know better, shouldn't we trust "a group that otherwise does stellar work" to understand where their strategic interest lies?

Again, an offset can be either an indulgence or a valuable strategic tool. Every case must be weighed on its own merits.

By my calculations it should be impossible for a coal plant to offset all its carbon and still be cheaper than better power resources. How is this coal plant able to offset its carbon and still be worth running? Maybe the offsets are way too cheap or they have some convoluted scheme.

It would be extremely expensive for the coal plant to eliminate its carbon emissions. But that same amount of emissions could be eliminated elsewhere relatively cheaply. So for the coal plant, it's cheaper to buy the equivalent amount of offsets than to reduce emissions.

That is the entire point of creating a carbon market -- to channel money to the cheapest reductions first.

Now, I'm in favor of a moratorium on new coal plants without sequestration. But the thing to do there, as Jones says, is push for the moratorium. We can't fight coal plants one by one. Who knows why Public Citizen decided offsets were the best it could get -- I'm not competent to judge the negotiations.

If you want to argue that the choice was between offsets or no-coal-plant, you need to argue it. You can't just assume it, and blame offsets.

grist.org

Whats more, is offsetting really such a good idea?

Or rather is "carbon neutral" enough to get things done.

Cause frankly, we need to get "carbon negative" if we want to have a prayer of dealing with global warming sometime in the next decade.

A few years ago I used the Metro almost every day to commute to work (I changed jobs four years ago and now walk to work). There were large ads promoting coal-fired electricity by pointing out that it fueled the subway we were using.

I think public transportation is generally a very good thing but that did give me pause.

Frances

Posted that before I realized that the Alternet thing was just the ITT article.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

There are technologies to reduce mercury but apparently the company didn't want to do them, as they are expensive.  Mercury is especially worrisome because it can "hopscotch" throughout the environment by air, land, and water media pathways.  So let me get this right, mercury is allowed to foul the local air, lands, and water so it can be reduced somewhere else in the planet?  Hmmm.  I wouldn't be eating any shrimp, crabs, or fish from that area for sure.  Shame, it's a nice wildlife area.

Ka-ching, absolved, they paid their indulgences.  All is good now.  Here's your permit to emit.  

Onward through the fog

Actually reducing mercury was the one real concession made - by about 80%. But remember that is not 80% from existing level but 80% from what the plant would otherwise have put out. So still a huge increase in local mercury with all the deaths that implies.  The last 20% will be offset, but not (I think) locally.

Public Citizen and SEED are also wrong in saying their agreement is precedent setting.  The precedent for proudly applauding capitulation to coal is the Illinois Sierra Club and its midwest coal team after agreeing to a new coal plant with Springfield's utility CWLP in July, 2006.  

Applauding another new CO2 plant for its accompanying efficiency savings or wind turbines they call offsets is the neo-con's Straussian noble lie.  It follows relativism to nihilism.  It's contemptuous of ordinary people, condemning them to ignorance in a cave.  It kills any remaining hopes and wishes of the world for U.S. leadership on the anthropomorphic global climate problem she practically started.  

These paper tiger enviro's should not try to justify their existence with propaganda press releases touting more coal use that ignores its accompanying waste.

Our state has mandates for renewables.   Then the utility gets people to pay more for wind power in their electric bills.   Well, they do meet their mandate.

What I meant was, the utilities meet the mandates, take money from people who pay more for wind power and make this deal.   They get the wind power (or other renewables) to solve 3 problems and only build it once.