What is offsetting?
See The Nag’s Guide to Offsetting your flights
See Cheat Neutral, a great little film about offsetting
Carbon Offsetting works like this.
You’ve emitted CO2. You work out how much you’ve emitted, and then pay someone else to cut their emissions by that amount.
Some offsetting money goes to tree-planting projects (trees suck up carbon, your bit of a flight has produced a tonne of CO2, you give someone money to plant enough tree(s) to suck up a tonne of CO2, and that kind of cancels out the emissions).
Some helps people in developing countries to use low-carbon technologies.
Which is good.
But if we’re looking for an enduring solution to flying’s contribution to climate change, offsetting probably isn’t it.
Two problems with it:
One
Offsetting involves flying (increasing emissions) and then giving money to projects that reduce emissions elsewhere. But we need to cut emissions everywhere, by a massive 80-90%, in order to stabilise the climate. So it’s not really enough to fly and then plant a tree. We need more trees and fewer flights.
Two
Voluntary offsetting is unregulated. That means there’s no way of knowing if projects are really cutting as much carbon as they’re claiming, or doing more than they would anyway. One industry insider told the nag anonymously that he thought it was “dodgy as hell” and “laughably inadequate.”
There are movements towards regulation but it’s early days at the moment.
But if you do fly, it’s worth doing: see The Nag’s Guide To Offsetting
