10 things you should know about tree 'offsets'

I recently blogged about Dell going Carbon Neutral.

My point was that a major electronics company is taking this seriously, where-as another (Apple) isn't, atleast to the extent required (I discussed this in How green is my Apple). This post was not an endorsment to carbon offsets as a solution to climate change. Climate Action Brisbane, Friends of the Earth and many other groups do not support them. Carbon offsets is the first step to world-wide agreement. Carbon Quota / Rationing is the next. This is discussed in length in George Monbiot's book "Heat".

The reasons we don't support carbon offsets as a solution to climate change is discussed in this New International article. The key points are below:

Active Carbon Pool

Carbon moves between forests, atmosphere and oceans in a complex natural rhythm of daily/seasonal/annual and multi-annual cycles. The overall amount in all three carbon stores together rarely increases in nature. This is ‘active’ carbon.

Fossil Carbon Pool

Some carbon is locked away and rarely comes into contact with the atmosphere naturally. This ‘fossil carbon’ is stored permanently in coal, oil and gas deposits and therefore is not part of the active carbon pool. When humans mine and extract these reserves this inactive fossil carbon does not go back in the ground, but is added into the active carbon pool, disrupting a delicate balance.

This is one of the reasons that the concept of ‘offsets’ is flawed. Offsets allow extraction of oil, coal and gas to continue, which in turn increases the amount of fossil carbon that is released into the active carbon pool disrupting the cycle. That is why campaigners argue that genuine solutions to climate change require us to keep fossil carbon (oil, coal and gas) in the ground.

The ten reasons are:

1. Carbon in trees is temporary (Trees can easily release carbon into the atmosphere through fire, disease, climatic changes, natural decay and timber harvesting);
   
2. One-way road (the carbon in fossil fuels is safely locked away until mined);
   
3. Fake credit (carbon offsets is a false economy);
   
4. Big foot (the ecological footprint, or space to plant trees of offset the amount of carbon we currently release is too great - we need space for food crops and even for crops for bio-fuels (which take away from space from food crops so they too are not a solution);
   
5. Subsidies for mega-plantations (carbon offsets will support and subsidise plantations, and these are not desired for other reasons aswell as the above));
   
6. Communities suffer twice (indigenous and forest dependant communities not only suffer from climate change but from their land which will be taken over by plantations);
   
7. Ticking time bomb (drastic actions are required - carbon offsets just allow business to continue as usual and does not address the real changes that need to be made);
   
8. Forest fraud (we should be leaving the forest in areas such as the Amazon and South East Asia - some of the most heavily logged areas in the world - not knocking them down and starting monoculture plantations);
   
9. Blind guess (it is an unreliable science in carbon offsets - it is truly difficult to measure what is saved with what was released);
   
10. The tenth reason is a sumarisation of the above - Carbon credits from tree planting are a phony climate fix.
    

The lead article to the above is at If you go down to the woods today....

From it I extract another reason:

• That carbon offsets have become a business which values money over the true intention of reducing the carbon in our atmosphere. It's just capitalism in another guise.
  

From the story:

A report in the Sunday Telegraph stated that, of the 10,000 trees that were supposedly distributed to small farmers in this largely dry Indian state, only a few hundred were found to be still alive. The rest perished through lack of water and inadequate financial and infrastructure support from the Carbon Neutral Company and its partners.

One of the project participants, Anandi Sharan Mieli of Women for Sustainable Development, accused the Carbon Neutral Company of having a ‘condescending’ attitude. ‘They do it for their interests, not really for reducing emissions. They do it because it’s good money,’ she was quoted as saying. The Carbon Neutral Company, however, blames Mieli’s group for not meeting its ‘contractual obligations’ to provide the necessary irrigation and support.


Also see:

• Uganda - funny place to store carbon - story that supports this;
  
• blog: weekly green planet " The Truthiness Of Carbon Neutrality".
  

The lust for money over everything else is responsible for 100% of the human caused reasons why we are in this mess today. In my own opinion, we will not be able to solve the climate crisis, along with the social injustice that perpetuates it, whilst capitalism is at the helm steering planet people.