Trendsurfing: Carbon capitalism (The Times)
By David Rowan
You know, we columnists can feel awfully ungreen about all that paper we force you to wade through. Then there's the vast wasted energy from our repeated assurances to the editor that our late copy will, honestly, be filed in just a couple of ticks - not to mention the plumes of hot air with which we invariably garland our half-formed notions. No wonder so many of us feel moved to compensate by recycling each other's material.
For a while there has been a fashionable solution to such ecological angst. A handful of green bodies would estimate your personal greenhouse-gas emissions, and then charge you to "offset" this CO2 output by planting trees or funding energy-efficient development projects. But in the past few months, what began as a PR statement for rock stars and youth-TV networks has turned into a competitive capitalist niche aimed at ordinary consumers.
There are now more than a dozen businesses and non-profits offering to compensate for your personal "carbon footprint", with bodies such as My Climate, Carbon Planet and TerraPass vying to be the eBays of environmental guilt. In Britain alone, thousands are already paying to offset carbon consumption. By 2007, some of these companies are claiming, the "carbon offset" business will have gone mainstream.
There is a serious point to it. With many of us blithely unaware of our energy consumption, these businesses argue that if we had to pay a market price for each tonne of CO2 we cause to be emitted, then we might modify our behaviour and so limit our contributions to global warming. Just as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol led countries and businesses to trade the right to pollute, this sector hopes we'll cough up for every flight taken and each centrally heated hour in front of our electrical appliances. And while critics question whether voluntary feel-good donations can save the planet, for the firms selling the carbon offsets, business is booming.
These companies are marketing directly to ethically minded consumers as well as striking partnership deals with airlines, energy suppliers and car-hire firms. Fly with BA to Los Angeles, for instance, and you are encouraged to pay Climate Care, a company based in Oxford, £12.86 to spend on eco-projects to compensate for the two tonnes of CO2 you have caused to be expelled. Drive a medium-sized car 12,000 miles a year, and the London-based CarbonNeutral Company suggests you give £60 to dedicate six mature trees that will cancel out your supposed 4.3 tonne output.
Tree-planting, in particular, has lately burnished the green credentials of polluters ranging from broadcaster MTV to rock band Iron Maiden (the pollution, in the latter's case, attributed to air miles rather than noise). Yet isn't the whole business simply... well, appeasing middle-class guilt? "To an extent, yes, but is that a problem?" replies Tom Morton, director of Climate Care, which uses its income to install energy-efficient stoves in Madagascar and restore forests in Uganda. "People are now more carbon literate, and we're giving them a chance to repair the environmental damage they're causing."
The next step, if government advisers have their way, is to formalise carbon-offsetting by giving citizens tradable "carbon allowances" along with our tax allowances. Yikes. Once the columnists start venting furiously against that one, it will take more than a few trees to lower the temperature.
(The Times Magazine, January 28 2006)
.. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
You know, we columnists can feel awfully ungreen about all that paper we force you to wade through. Then there's the vast wasted energy from our repeated assurances to the editor that our late copy will, honestly, be filed in just a couple of ticks - not to mention the plumes of hot air with which we invariably garland our half-formed notions. No wonder so many of us feel moved to compensate by recycling each other's material.
For a while there has been a fashionable solution to such ecological angst. A handful of green bodies would estimate your personal greenhouse-gas emissions, and then charge you to "offset" this CO2 output by planting trees or funding energy-efficient development projects. But in the past few months, what began as a PR statement for rock stars and youth-TV networks has turned into a competitive capitalist niche aimed at ordinary consumers.
There are now more than a dozen businesses and non-profits offering to compensate for your personal "carbon footprint", with bodies such as My Climate, Carbon Planet and TerraPass vying to be the eBays of environmental guilt. In Britain alone, thousands are already paying to offset carbon consumption. By 2007, some of these companies are claiming, the "carbon offset" business will have gone mainstream.
There is a serious point to it. With many of us blithely unaware of our energy consumption, these businesses argue that if we had to pay a market price for each tonne of CO2 we cause to be emitted, then we might modify our behaviour and so limit our contributions to global warming. Just as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol led countries and businesses to trade the right to pollute, this sector hopes we'll cough up for every flight taken and each centrally heated hour in front of our electrical appliances. And while critics question whether voluntary feel-good donations can save the planet, for the firms selling the carbon offsets, business is booming.
These companies are marketing directly to ethically minded consumers as well as striking partnership deals with airlines, energy suppliers and car-hire firms. Fly with BA to Los Angeles, for instance, and you are encouraged to pay Climate Care, a company based in Oxford, £12.86 to spend on eco-projects to compensate for the two tonnes of CO2 you have caused to be expelled. Drive a medium-sized car 12,000 miles a year, and the London-based CarbonNeutral Company suggests you give £60 to dedicate six mature trees that will cancel out your supposed 4.3 tonne output.
Tree-planting, in particular, has lately burnished the green credentials of polluters ranging from broadcaster MTV to rock band Iron Maiden (the pollution, in the latter's case, attributed to air miles rather than noise). Yet isn't the whole business simply... well, appeasing middle-class guilt? "To an extent, yes, but is that a problem?" replies Tom Morton, director of Climate Care, which uses its income to install energy-efficient stoves in Madagascar and restore forests in Uganda. "People are now more carbon literate, and we're giving them a chance to repair the environmental damage they're causing."
The next step, if government advisers have their way, is to formalise carbon-offsetting by giving citizens tradable "carbon allowances" along with our tax allowances. Yikes. Once the columnists start venting furiously against that one, it will take more than a few trees to lower the temperature.
(The Times Magazine, January 28 2006)
.. . . AND READ MORE TRENDSURFING COLUMNS HERE . . .
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