A colleague told me about an interesting article I’d missing in the grauniad: The inconvenient truth about the carbon offset industry. Which I fear merely confirms my lack of trust of these things.
The main point was that a number of companies are doing offsetting by buying up EU emissions credits and then retiring them. However, since these things are in surplus the prices are very low and retiring them does nothing useful. Other than make money for the middleman, presumably. And, if you don’t inquire to closely, allowing you to wipe away your guilt.
An amusing side-issue in the article concerned British Airways attempts: because of a conflict between those who wanted to promote offsetting, and those who would rather not mention climate change at all, the scheme has hardly had any take-up.
And lastly The British government itself has been caught out over emissions from its presidency of the G8 in 2005. The then environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that all carbon emissions from all meetings and travel linked with the one-year presidency would be neutralised. Delegates to the Gleneagles summit in July 2005 were given certificates declaring that all their carbon emissions were being offset. But it hasn’t happened. Because of foul-ups in setting up the scheme. So you can’t even trust the govenment (whats new?) on something as basic as “yes we’ve managed to at least in theory offset your emissions”.