Carbon-neutral

[jofish22]

I went ahead and bought carbon credits to offset my recent slew of flights. Somewhat held back by the stunningly poor and contradictory array of carbon calculators out there on the web: most seem to be incredibly poorly written, contradict even themselves, and lousily designed. But after running the same flight through a handful of places (LHR-

Comments

[zapophenia]

I've been having a problem with this too. I want to go carbon neutral but i get so confused every time i look at all of the sites. And i can't stand most of their interfaces which is a lame excuse but it makes me not want to deal. (Compared to say Network for Good which is so easy that i just keep donating.)

What all did you look at?

[jofish22]

I completely agree with you. Why on earth are all of their interfaces so bad? Is it a secret plot by the oil companies or something to reduce environmental awareness by poor usability?

I looked at probably a dozen carbon calculators and a dozen or so sites that actually let you buy carbon credits. I didn't do an exhaustive analysis: I'd just open up a bunch of windows, and when I read something that I thought made it sound like a bad idea ("We'll use your funding to... support some kinda research into some kinda clean energy! Yeah!") I closed it. Carbonplanet seemed to have their act together a lot more than most. I would have liked to have seen the phrase "CER" on there, and I didn't, but I think it goes to show that these standards have a long way to go. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,445836,00.html is one of the more thoughtful pieces I've seen on the idea for a bit. Thanks jforbess.)

High prices&lack of transparency in carbon retail markets:R they taking advantage of Global Warming?

[anonymous]

A new report on the carbon offset retail market shows that retail offset providers face several challenges in supplying credible, cost effective offsets to the market. After finding a price of £1.5 ton/CO2 per carbon credits in US, I was surprised to see prices in different carbon offset websites from different countries ranging from £2.50 up to £12.40 with an average of £5.10 tonne/CO2. In the Brisith case price ranges from £7.40 to £9.00 tonne/CO2 which I see ludicrous because this could mean that we pay more without making a real benefit to the environment. This make me wonder if the price this offfset providers charge is really the cost of the project or the money is being taken by intermediaries. I think this market needs more transparency so we as consumers can evaluate the offset quality, where the money goes, how the project are selected and benefits they provide to the environment and communities. It will be sad to see that our hopes to mitigate Global Warming by offseting our emissions are not helping as they should.

what about in the UK?

[nbrown2]

Aren't there organizations in the UK that are also certified in their carbon offset activities?

I'm curious why you wouldn't trust any of them.

Nathan Brown
Free newsletter shows you how to prevent global warming from getting worse.

Re: what about in the UK?

[jofish22]

Well, I'm actually looking for something that'll make a net positive change in carbon balance, rather than something that just retires carbon credits. But I was particularly unimpressed by one British carbon credit website that promised to plant trees "near you" in the UK. The South East of England is pretty damn densely populated, and becoming more so. There's not a lot of room for planting new forests around the place, whereas there's that possibility reasonably in Australia. And frankly, "near you" just smells of empty promise, and if they're going to make one empty promise then what's to stop them from making more

Re: what about in the UK?

[nbrown2]

Thanks for the reply. I can understand your concern about the "planted near you."

However, I don't understand why retiring credits isn't of interest to you. Overall if we are not putting more carbon into the atmosphere than is absorbed by life on the planet, then humans will not be contributing to climate change via global warming. So, if one helps reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmospher, that helps as much as sequestering C02 with trees that are growing.

Do you see it differently?

Nathan Brown
Free newsletter shows you how to prevent global warming from getting worse.

Re: what about in the UK?

[nbrown2]

Hey,

I was just wondering if you are going to respond to my previous post.

Nathan
Three Ways To Help Prevent Global Warming On Your Vacations By Reducing Your Carbon Emissions