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Offsets Are a CROC
If you do something good for the environment, does it make any sense
that you should then be entitled to do something bad to the environment?
Of
course it doesn’t. And yet that is basically what corporate polluters
are pushing for as climate legislation makes its way through Congress.
Rather than making required pollution cuts, they want to use “carbon
offsets,” which would essentially allow them to continue their dirty,
polluting business as usual while outsourcing green jobs and cleaner
skies elsewhere…mostly overseas!
Amazingly, despite the fact
that offsets could totally undermine our efforts to combat global
warming –letting polluters increase greenhouse gas emissions for years
to come – there is now a group out there advocating carbon offsets be
made available to individuals, so that regular folks can also be
entitled to do something bad to the environment if they do something
good for it. The group is called the Carbon Regulatory Offset Committee (CROC). Check out this video from their charismatic spokesman, Carl Cordova:
Offsets work like this: rather than making required emissions reductions, polluters outsource their obligations – paying others to protect forests overseas, for instance. The flaws in this scheme are manifold. Aside from allowing polluters to evade their responsibility to reduce their emissions as quickly as possible in order to prevent runaway global warming, offsets are difficult to measure and verify.
How much forest, a living ecosystem that is constantly changing, do you have to protect to equal a ton of carbon? How do you make sure it gets protected over the long-term? If it burns in a totally natural forest fire, does it still count as an offset? Most importantly, how do you make sure the same amount of deforestation doesn’t just happen somewhere else instead?
You really need to check out TheCROC.org to appreciate just how insane offsets are.
7 Comments so far
Show Alllets be honest folks...the whole CO2 things is 100% about raising taxes and revenue for the US Gov't, the EU gov't, and especially the UN. If this global warming was so dire China, India and the 3rd World wouldn't get exemptions everytime. It is a power and money grab.
Carobon offsets will also create another commodity for the unregulated financial industry to exploit using derivatives and other financial instruments of mass destruction, thereby enhancing their ability to pollute and create an even bigger financial crisis than they created in 2008.
How about, no.
China is taking global warming seriously...and they're building a hell of a lot more wind energy than we are.
What I like about right-wing trolls, is that their arguments seem to always be so suspended in la-la-land of such laughable unreality that they defy a considerate response. But I will try:
Potentially catastrophic human-caused global warming and climate change is a fact.
This article was about carbon offsets as a completely ineffective measure to address global warming. As raydelcamino noted, cap and trade with offsets is popular with the elites, because the capitalists can turn it into a Ponzi-ish investment bubble scam.
I don't have a clue what taxes you might be talking about, although carbon taxes at the wellhead or tipple would be an effective way of addressing global warming.
Conservatives don't like carbon offsets either, they call it a "wealth transfer".
Bring America Back !!!!
****You Know, hugging the atmosphere really is more difficult to measure than hugging trees. Singer Madonna should be consulted on "Offsets", for she is expert on
Truth Or Dare !!
***Many thanks to Greenpeace though, for hugging baby seals, whales, manatees, and yes--even those lovable huggable Sharks.
Many hugs to the Heros and Heroins at Greenpeace!!!!!!
I recall things like weather futures being floated as futures contracts. And that was when the futures markets were under pretty serious regulation. Any cap/trade/offset program would indeed allow predatory trading to take place. Even better, those programs would also enable the worst offenders to relegate their responsibilities elsewhere. Although China is adding wind power, they also have built several huge dams, and are opening several coal plants a month. As the prevailing winds blow the coal smoke away, they'll generate more juice with the wind turbines. Sooner rather than later, China's sparkling cities will exceed their capacity, and the rural areas, already under agricultural stress, will get even worse. Then we'll see how that free market really works.