CARBON OFFSETTING the myths, the truths

Can giving money to plant trees far away really make up for your lifestyles environmental impact? the answer to that is a big maybe. Offsetting can be described like this, you release a certain amount of carbon emission each day, from driving the car to leaving the lights on when not in use, to make up for this you calculate the number of trees needed to soak up the greenhouse gases you have released and then you pay someone to plant that number of trees for you. This is a rough example of offsetting. Official off setting is sanctioned under the Kyoto Protocol, this is controlled by a very strict set of rules and a complex bureaucracy, which allows governments and companies to earn carbon credits that can be traded. But now there is an unofficial way of offsetting, where you have groups of voluntary profit-making bodies that charge a fee to organise offsets on behalf of anyone. This business has developed from 3 million tons in 2004 to 20 to 50 million tons last year. To be free of your guilt of polluting the environment you can simply go online calculate your total carbon emission and then free yourself from guilt with just a click on the mouse. But this may have little credibility as the companies do not state where this money is used or what criteria they use to select the reductions they sell. Due to this lack of transparency we would not know exactly whether or not our money is really doing what the company claims.

I personally feel that this unofficial selling of offsets is nothing more than a gimmick that plays on the fears of the common people to buy "offsets" to make up for the harm they have done to the environment. the only thing we can actually do for the environmentis to save electricity and other resources whenever possible and leave off setting to the governments.