Pirate's Cove

How bad are carbon offsets when the Washington Post has a negative article about them?

On the Internet, erasing your role in climate change seems as easy as ordering a DVD — and cheaper than a cup of coffee a day.

With a click, a credit card and $99, visitors can pay a Silver Spring nonprofit group, Carbonfund.org, to "offset" a year’s worth of greenhouse-gas emissions. Whatever the customer put into the atmosphere — by flying, driving, using electricity — the site promises to cancel out, by funding projects that reduce pollutants.

Sites such as this one, offering absolution from the modern nag of climate guilt, have created a $55 million industry that once would have been beyond the greenest of imaginations. The market for "voluntary carbon offsets" now encompasses dozens of sellers and thousands of buyers, including individuals and corporations.

But in some cases, these customers may be buying good feelings and little else.

And that is pretty much all one gets for their money. Feeling good. They allow people to live their lives just as they had been, driving their SUVs, running their A/C, taking plane rides, etc, all the while complaining about how bad human caused "climate change" is. But it does not really solve anything, except on a hope and a prayer that something might change in the future. It’s like taking aspirin for a gangerous leg (not that I believe global warming is a huge issue that we can do anything about, just an allegory.) It might make you feel better, but the leg will still smell like almonds.

Large corporations have bought offsets by the millions. Last month, one utility, American Electric Power, agreed to offset about 4.6 million tons of carbon dioxide by paying for projects that reduce methane — a powerful pollutant — seeping from farm manure.

See, now, methane IS an actually dangerous greenhouse gas, considerably worse then CO2. But, are said projects being looked at, or are they actually doing anything? So far, it seems to be all academic.

But, again, in my opinion, this whole climate change idiocy takes the focus away from environmental issues that are important, such as pollution from cars, ocean pollution, clear-cutting, over fishing, etc.