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.