Cheat Neutral
This is not new, but is pretty clever. In the great tradition of the Yes Men, these guys perpetuated a fairly clever launch of their new business, Cheat Neutral. They, and the issues around carbon offsetting, got a huge amount of publicity. The vid has been viewed on YouTube around 16,000 times since July, and it got it’s creators on the BBC, earned them praise for the clever, low cost campaigning and a plethora of interviews on US talkshows with credulous shock jocks.
The chaps behind it work for The Centre for Alternative Technology in Britain.
There’s heaps of stuff out there sounding a note of caution, and as with every industry, scheme and human endeavour there will be cowboys, shysters and fraud. Not to mention the uncomfortable implication that one can continue to pollute willy-nilly, as long as one can pony up the cash to assuage any guilt.
Is it better than nothing, or a dangerous red herring?
September 27th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Definitely a dangerous red herring - especially because carbon trading relies on the market. Check out the recent Sunday Star-Time columns by Finlay MacDonald on why carbon trading is a green con.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
September 27th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Nonsense. Offsetting is a part of the solution: not a big part, but a helpful way to smooth a transition. Finlay’s piece was talking about carbon trading, not offsetting, and he was wrong about that as well.
September 28th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I know that the very concept of offsetting has been compared to mediaeval indulgences, but I was wondering whether there were any schemes that the frog would recommend as actually making a difference? I’m asking, because several month’s worth of walking to work and turning the appliances off at the wall can be undone by a single trip to see one’s mum (especially when we live on a couple of islands that are a long way from anywhere and have virtually no long-distance public transport).
That Mother Jones article that you cite quotes a report that lists some as excellent, and I was wondering what you thought of local programmes like carboNZero and Meridian’s credits.
Finally, I was wondering whether things like public transport initiatives could sell credits as a way to help fund themselves? For instance, imagine an expansion of Wellington’s electric rail and trolley bus network, powered by local renewable energy: if it offers new services that get commuters out of cars, would that count as a worthwhile offsetting programme?
September 28th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I understand that ministers will now have their official travel CO2 offset at the taxpayers’ expense.
I’d be interested to know just how many of these ministers offset their private CO2 emissions out of their own pocket. Or is it the case that they take a rather different view of the “problem” when it’s their own money, but are quite happy to squander taxpayers’ money on worthless gestures?
How about a scheme that only offsets ministers’ official CO2 eissions if they themselves offset their private CO2 emissions out of their own pocket? How many of our political masters would meet this requirement?