Christian Aid have just launched a new piece of work on climate change – the most pressing campaign issue for the organisation - it is afterall vulnerable people in poor countries that are affected first and most seriously - it could well undo decades of progress in fighting poverty.Photo: Carpenters Arms, Westrip
In their new report they look at the extensive and global economic reach of the UK and conclude that we have a far greater impact on global carbon emissions than the 2% the government declares. In the light of this the report argues that the UK should bear a far greater responsibility for reducing the world’s CO2 emissions than its rhetoric suggests.
This is very timely and comes on top of long-overdue criticism of Carbon off-setting. In 2005 this business was worth around £20m and is expected to top £300m over the next three years.
A report ‘The Carbon Neutral Myth – Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins’ was published by Carbon Trade Watch - it is highly critical of the offsets industry, arguing that not only are supposed climate benefits impossible to quantify, but that projects are also being imposed on communities in the global South with little consultation - there are some shocking stories in the report giving illustrations of failing projects. In Uganda, for example, people have been expelled from their land to make way for plantation schemes, while workers are paid below subsistence wages.
The report also explains how these companies have little or no monitoring and are using number-crunching trickery to boost their eco-friendly boasts. Plus the off-setting industry is based on only limited research into the actual long term benefits of tree-planting. Carbon in a tree is not stored safely. Trees burn, trees die down, there's insect infestation etc etc Last year WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace issued a statement saying they do not support forestry projects to offset carbon emissions and last month a new US study claimed that where you plant makes a massive difference to effectiveness.
For me carbon off-setting has been a distraction from the critical task of tackling our unsustainable consumption patterns and business practices. It is no wonder activists are trying to highlight wahat is going on: last week London Rising Tide occupied the offices of the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC), at the forefront of carbon offsetting.
Kevin Smith, London Rising Tide summarises the key objections:
• Some of the most polluting companies (and politicians) are using offsets as a cheap form of greenwash - a distraction from their inherently unsustainable practices and a refusal to take more serious action on climate change.
• Creative accountancy and dubious scientific methodologies are often used to inflate profit margins.
• Our knowledge of the carbon cycle is so limited that it is impossible to say whether tree plantations even have even a net positive benefit in terms of mitigating climate change, let alone exactly quantifying this supposed benefit into a saleable commodity.
• It is impossible to determine the baseline of what would have happened if the project had not taken place that would enable calculations of how many credits could be generated.
• Projects that look great on the website or in the leaflet are often, in practice, mismanaged, ineffective or detrimental to the local communities who have to endure them.
• The media and certain celebrities have been complicit in promoting an analysis of climate change that puts all the focus on individual lifestyles and draws attention from the wider, systemic changes that need to be made in our societies and economies.
The act of commodification at the heart of offset schemes assigns a financial value to people’s desire to act on climate action, and neatly transforms this potential into another market transaction.
There is then no urgent need for people to question the underlying social and economic structures that brought about climate change in the first place - one has just to click and pay the assigned price to get 'experts' to take action on your behalf. Not only is it ineffective and based on half-baked ‘guessing games’ and dubious science, it is also very disempowering for the participants.
For more information, visit http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk/
10 comments:
There are some people out here who are trying to do offsets in an honest and transparent way. Maybe visit us at treeflights.com and have a good, forensic look at our project with an open a mind as you can. You are only telling half the story.
To address just one of the inaccuracies in this post. Trees can provide a secure and long-term sink for carbon. There are trees in the U.S. alive today that were fixing CO2 when they were building the pyramids.If we fail to take advantage of the immense absorptive capabilities of trees we will lose this battle.
While you rail against offsetting, the real climate criminals carry on regardless. Why not expend your energies on stopping the most polluting corporations and schemes like, say, the olympics? 9 billion pounds and billions of tons of CO2 expended- to watch some people run about.. pathetic.
These comments are partially right - but there have been too many dodgy schemes and it is high-time they were exposed. Carbon offsetting is a dangerous distraction - as noted these schemes encourage thinking that there is no need for people to question the underlying social and economic structures that brought about climate change in the first place. They basically are offering “peace of mind” to consumers where none should exist. This breeds complacency.
Of course they should have a place but as this study shows the dodgy schemes are ruining it for all. How can we know which scheme works? In some the trees planted haven't survived and in any case they take many years to 'offset' the carbon, And how can we get across the message that radical change is needed.
As the last comment notes the climate criminals are getting away with it - regular blog readers will have seen my comments on many of these.
The comment writer may also be aware that the Green party have been amongst the sternest critics of the Olympics - the 2 Green London Assembly Members have regularly challenged the incredible nonsense of some of the plans.
Hi Phil - thanks for the mention, I'm a Christian Aid staff member based in the Cotswolds. I thought you might be interested to know that there are a bunmch of Christian Aid podcasts on climate change including a more detailed financial argument for why we should be taking on the City of London - called 'Drenched in Carbon'. Podcasts can be found at
http://feeds.feedburner.com/christianaidpodcasts
Cheers
Christian Aid podcasts above are excellent - well put together professional stuff with good info - thanks for tip from comment above.
I'm a Green party member and at an Olympics plenary, when questioning Seb Coe, and the chairs of the Olympics Delivery Authority (ODA) who are creating the Olympic Park, and the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) who are staging the Games, Green Assembly Member Jenny Jones asked why the London Sustainability Commission's Olympic scrutiny committee (LSCOC) wasn't being funded. This body is a vital part of checking that the environmental credentials of the 2012 Games are valid. Jenny was later told, by the new Chair of LSCOC, that her pressure came at a crucial time and was vital in the agreement of the funding on the very next day.
Also at Mayor's Question Time, under pressure from Jenny, the Mayor admitted for the first time that the ODA was falling short on its environmental aims, but that he would ensure they performed better. We'll see.
Dear Phil,
The challenge as I see it is to try and provide an offset option that isn't a distraction, is honest about the timescales and helps to educate people to take more responsibility for their emissions. What you need to remember is that the vast majority of the 8 billion individual flights taken globally last year were not offset in any way and were made by people who either dont care or are unaware of the issues.
As I run an offset company I regularly talk to my customers and I can assure you that without exception these are people who are very concerned about the damage they are doing and genuinely want to try and do something about it. Offsetting is not a disraction for these people. It is part of their journey towards flying less and hopefully, ultimately not at all. Most people feel completely powerless in the face of climate change and if you take the offset option away from them you disempower them further. Better to say, as we do at Treeflights that flying is really destructive, keep it to the absolute minimum but that if you choose to do this carbon intensive activity then at least consider giving a little back.
Last point. Our customers get nothing back from us other than 2 impressions on their computer screens. They are voluntarily choosing to pay extra to give a little bit back to nature to make up for some of the destruction that they are responsible for. When you criticise offsets you undermine the altruism of the ordinary people who are simply trying to take some responsibility for the health of our atmosphere.
This is precisely the mind-set that we need to encourage, surely Phil?
Thanks for on-going debate - I am also reassured that your company tells the 'truth' about flying - Greens are working in the EU and elsewhere to ensure that everyone who flies pays those costs automatically. Only when the true costs of flying are incorporated into the price of a ticket will we start to see people developing the alternatives properly - video conferencing, holidays in the Cotswolds, train or whatever.
Those who currently offset are great but they are only a tiny minority. We have to reduce flying and stop building more airports. Of course individual actions to tackle climate change need to be encouraged but we need policy changes - as I'm sure you agree!
Today Green MEP Caroline Lucas called for a radical overhaul of the EU’s climate change policy after MPs described its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as "inefficient, ineffective and unambitious."
A properly designed emissions
trading scheme could have an important role to play in reducing Europe’s CO2 emissions, but it should be flanked by a range of other measures including mandatory national emissions targets.
The ETS had failed to reduce emissions at all yet the UK Government views the EU ETS as the cornerstone of its climate change
policy.
Tackling climate change is urgent as you well know, and we haven’t got time waste merely tinkering with a scheme which is complex, opaque, unambitious – and doesn’t work anyway. We must start right now by implementing legally binding
emissions reduction targets on all EU nations – and using emissions trading as a tool for achieving that rather than making it a goal in its itself.
But I digress - off-setting carbon has a place but the priorities must be reducing flights - the message carbon off-setting gives to some people is that we can continue our current lifestyle without significant making changes. Having said that I accept, as noted before, that it does have a place.
Offsetting has 'very limited role'
Thursday, 12 Apr 2007
By Green Party's principal speaker Dr Derek Wall.
Carbon offsetting is big business. As more and more of us, both individually and in business, seek to cut our personal contribution to climate change, and therefore the greenhouse gas emissions for which we are responsible, a whole industry has sprung up enabling us to pay to cut someone else's to make up for them. But are such schemes a useful tool in the ever-more-urgent fight against climate change, or are they little more than so much hot air?.
Carbon offset sounds promising but the Green Party is critical of how it works in practice. We would echo many of the criticisms of the Durban group, which suggest that the framework within which present policy works is both ineffective and biased toward the interests of elite groups.
First, some schemes are simply fraudulent and are at best based on dubious accounting. For example, if you fly carbon is emitted today but by planting a tree is absorbed over decades (and released if the tree dies). Strong legislation is needed to make sure that carbon is actually off set, often it is not.
Second, some schemes involving taking land out of the hands of local people in developing countries who often practice a low carbon and ecologically sensitive lifestyle. Plantar SA in Brazil have received and Chris Lang has produced evidence of abuse of local people for carbon offset in Uganda.
Third, it allows the relatively prosperous to continue polluting while shifting the burden on to poorer citizens. It reduces guilt without tackling the fundamental problem of moving to a low carbon economy.
Using carbon offset as part of the calculations for carbon reduction nationally is particularly problematic. We need to cut carbon not continue producing it. Carbon offset can be related to the weakness inherent in the Stern approach which while based on good intentions, fails to look at the need for structural change and tends to ignore the political context necessary for meaningful action.
It is important to change structures, creating cheap accessible public transport, renewable energy and investing in local services so that citizens can realistically reduce their energy consumption with the least pain. Obviously a moratorium on road building and airport expansion is vital.
Part of the battle against climate change is about maintaining and extending viable carbon sinks, so rainforests and forestry in general must be conserved. Plantar SA plans to plant thousands of acres of monoculture eucalyptus as a Kyoto agreement carbon offset scheme is an example of how carbon offset schemes can damage the environment.
Action against the enclosure and destruction of such habitats is vital, research, notably Ostrom and Cornerhouse, suggests they are best preserved by local communities who have developed ecologically sustainable economic systems. These communities are under great pressure and have been ignored almost totally in discussions of tackling climate change. Typically in West Papua, thousands of acres of rainforest are being logged to make way for palm oil plantations, accelerating climate change, yet the UK and other major players in the international community put little pressure on Indonesia whose invasion in the 1970s has killed many thousands of Papuans and has had an appalling impact on the environment. The Papua example can be multiplied by very many others.
In summary the Green Party argues that Carbon offset schemes have a very limited role, that they must be regulated, they must not be used as way of evading UK national targets. Structural change to progress carbon neutrality is vital but is missing from the policy debate. The need to preserve carbon sinks demand swift and integrated policy action including support for rainforest protection and that of other vital habitats.
Carbon offset must not act as compensatory device for avoiding the change necessary to prevent runaway climate change.
Useful website:
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/
Also David Janner-Klausner, Head of Centre for Local Sustainability wrote:
Carbon Offsetting Councils
Carbon offsetting is a rapidly-growing business, unregulated and
controversial but seemingly inevitable. It offers a useful solution for
addressing climate change – someone, somewhere, will do something that
saves the same amount of carbon as you emit. Pay them, and it’s done.
But what if there was a way of reaping the rewards of offsetting closer
to home?
Several local authorities are looking into carbon offsetting, yet even
at best it is a problematic solution. At worst, a normal offset scheme
is guilt money, a substitute for action and spent on dubiously audited
programmes. For local authorities it sends money from payment of
council tax to projects far away from the taxpayers.
At best, well-developed projects are used as a last resort to clear a
residual carbon emission that cannot be avoided. Local authorities,
rather than outsource carbon offsetting, should develop a scheme that
offsets carbon in their local areas. This has the political advantage
of being transparent and revenue neutral, because local money stays in
the local economy.
The idea is simple: invest the offsetting money in local projects that
reduce carbon emissions. These can be primary projects, such as
replacing a gas-fired boiler with one burning wood pellets. They can be
secondary – invest in a local business that is developing a
carbon-reducing technology. Or they can be tertiary – for example,
sponsoring a course for fitters of solar water heaters at a local
college.
Carbon-offsetting councils will be designing schemes to get the
community involved, not simply paying their way out of a problem. Why
not champion a competition to create local offsetting opportunities?
The basis can be simple: using an offsetting company, £1 buys an offset
for 100kg of carbon. The competition will be to provide the greatest
carbon saving per pound.
The valid criticisms of offsetting schemes can and must be avoided by a
local project. In some cases offsetting has been channelled to
programmes that would be happening anyway, providing no additional
benefits. Or, it has seen investment where savings in carbon emissions
will not be delivered for several years or decades – just think of the
time it takes for a tree to grow.
Saving carbon now is crucial because global warming does not proceed in
a linear fashion, but accelerates by triggering positive feedback
mechanisms. As the Stern report pointed out, a tonne of carbon saved
today will do more good than a tonne saved in a few years’ time.
Local offsetting programmes can invest in new projects or provide a
boost for existing ones, bringing forward carbon savings by a few
years. The knowledge and interaction local councils have with the local
community also increases the opportunity to bring cascading benefits.
Properly directed investment could bring benefits beyond climate change
to broader objectives for sustainable communities, such as skills, fuel
poverty and health.
Local offsetting is a viable way to deal with residual emissions, at
least in the short and medium term. It is an approach that is
completely in line with the local authority’s community leadership and
place-shaping role. It is within its powers and provides a means of
engaging the community rather than sending its tax money away. Keep it
clean, keep it local.
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