Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?

From The NY Times
April 29, 2007
Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/weekinreview/29revkin.html?ref=environment

Among celebrities and large corporations, there exists a lot of "green hype" including the idea of buying carbon offsets -- basically paying money to a company that might fund carbon-neutral energy or plant trees on one's behalf to absorb CO2. The practice is heralded among many but also ridiculed by others who claim it is like buying the right to pollute -- but that the end result is still pollution.

From this piece:
“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation,” said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. “Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins.”

My Take:
While it certainly is no solution to our problem of climate change, once closely regulated and given a watchdog to see that funds are used to do what is promised (be it planting trees or building wind generators), this could be one small important part of the puzzle for combating climate chage.

While planting trees is great, and serves great purposes of providing shade, habitat, some CO2 absorption (of course Oxygen production) as well as possibly reducing the heat island effect in urban areas, questions still remain about the actual amount of greenhouse gases that will be removed.

The better bet for those who wish to offset their carbon footprint is to donate to those groups who use the funds for carbon-neutral energy production, such as wind power, because that prevents all the more greenhouse gas emissions from going into the atmosphere. Because trees are great, go out and plant one on your own if you would like to have an even greater positive envirohuman impact (more on trees in future posts).