Carbon Offsetting

in Conservation by Araneta&Tan — October 7, 2009 at 11:08 am | 0 comments

Carbon Offsetting

The biggest moral dilemma with going on holiday used to just involve ensuring that you went with a company promoting responsible tourism. But now a new problem has arisen as climate change has become a greater issue. Many of us fly to exotic places all around the world each year, but each time we do so we are responsible for the release of carbon emissions into the environment.

All of us can reduce our carbon emissions in very simple ways, such as turning off the lights when not using them. But as there is not a lot we can do personally to reduce our CO2 emissions when flying on a plane, we have to instead take responsibility for those emissions by cancelling them out.

Responsible travel now involves carbon emission reduction. But how do you go about reducing your carbon emissions when you are sitting on a plane? The answer lies in carbon offsetting.

Reducing your Impact

The basis behind carbon offsetting is that as you release carbon dioxide into the air through your activities, you invest a certain amount of money into a scheme that is dedicated to reducing carbon emissions, thereby ‘paying back’ your carbon and cancelling it out. The same amount of carbon is taken out of the environment from your donation to a carbon offsetting scheme as you release on your journey, helping you to sleep better at night.

Carbon Neutral

Carbon Neutral

There are many carbon offsetting schemes, including Target Neutral, CO2 Balance and Climate Care. But one of the most well-known companies geared towards helping you to pay back your emissions is Carbon Neutral. It has a simple, user-friendly website that provides a very simple calculator. Using this calculator, you can work out the exact amount of CO2 that will be released from your flight, which takes airports and connections into account. Straight away you are given a figure and a range of options as to how you can pay this back to make your trip carbon neutral.

Payback Methods

There are a range of options available for paying back your carbon emissions on all of the websites. Mostly, they are geared towards a combination of renewable energy projects such as wind, wave, solar, tidal, hydro, biomass and biogas projects; resource conservation including changing industrial processes to make them more efficient; and donating to CER (Certified Emission Reduction) programmes in developing countries.

Criticisms

Carbon offsetting is a relatively new phenomenon, and as such there have been some criticisms in the past. One of the most popular practices in the past for offsetting carbon was to plant trees. However, it soon became clear that this was not the most effective technique. In some cases, mismanagement of the projects meant that local people were being thrown off their land to make way for the trees, and non-native trees were being planted that caused more problems than they solved.

It has now been agreed that tree planting is not the most effective means of combating the problem, and as such most of the main schemes and charities now advocate spending the money on schemes that incorporate technology solutions instead.