It’s all the rage these days to talk about carbon offsets as a way to compensate for the carbon load that your energy use places on the environment. But let’s look at the numbers. A tree consumes somewhere between 3 and 15 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Let’s be generous and say the average tree offsets 10 pounds. The average American’s energy consumption causes 20 tons of carbon dioxide to be released every year. So, to offset your energy use, you’d need to plant 4000 trees every year. I’m not sure you’d have any time left over for anything else! But that’s not the end of the story – when those trees die, they decay, and release their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. So, to be carbon neutral, you’ll have to task your descendants with replacing all those trees in the future, in addition to planting their own.
Planting trees as a carbon offset may make you feel good about yourself, but it’s unlikely to help with global warming.
March 1, 2007 at 6:30 pm |
Carbon offsetting is not just about planting trees. In fact, many good offsetting programmes explicitly exclude forestry projects.
Offsetting is about subsidising innovation elsewhere that otherwise would not have happened. It simultaneously puts a price on not reducing carbon emissions and provides funding for green projects.
Voluntary programmes such as the Chicago Climate Exchange show how offsetting works without planting trees.
http://inbalance.wordpress.com/2007/02/23/offsetting-splits-the-green-movement/
March 7, 2007 at 5:18 pm |
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