We hear constantly about the threat of global warming, and the possible threats to our coastlines, food production, and even the continuation of life on Earth. We are told that to prevent global warming we have to reduce the carbon output of our society, but while politicians squabble about how to do it many people and companies have gotten tired of waiting and are looking for ways to help. But what to do? Few people buy boxes of carbon or dump bags of it at the landfill, so it’s hard to understand how to go about cutting back. The first step to reducing our individual, corporate, or societal carbon output is understanding our carbon footprint.
A “carbon footprint” is the measure of net environmental carbon contribution of any activity or combination of activities. This footprint is large (positive) if it adds carbon or small (negative) if it absorbs carbon. For instance, driving your car to work adds to your carbon footprint because you are emitting carbon from combustion. Building a solar plant reduces a carbon footprint because the clean solar power replaces polluting sources such as coal or gas. Trees absorb carbon from the air, so planting a tree is carbon-negative but cutting down a tree is carbon-positive. It’s more complicated than that though, because it’s difficult to measure where an “activity” begins or ends. It’s easy to see that carbon is produced when you drive, but it’s also produced when your car is built, shipped to you, and disposed of when it finally dies. So, is the carbon footprint of your car the amount of carbon it uses when you drive, or the amount of carbon produced during the car’s life cycle? It can be either depending on how you choose to measure it. Because almost every human activity produces some quantity of carbon it’s almost impossible to reduce individual or point-source carbon production to zero, but we can be cut our total carbon output to zero (become carbon neutral) by balancing total carbon production with reductions in other areas.
“Carbon credits” and “carbon offsets” are two closely related concepts that started as an argument between two philosophies. One said that government should set limits on individual carbon producers and fine them if they went over their limits. This didn’t play well with businesses, who didn’t want to be subject to onerous or arbitrary regulations. The businesses proposed a self-policing policy and voluntary reductions but that didn’t play well with environmentalists, who didn’t trust the businesses to police themselves or set aggressive reduction targets. The two sides eventually came up with a creative new solution that combined both approaches- the “cap and trade” system. The government would determine the total amount of carbon currently being produced, estimate what contribution each carbon producer made to the total, and cap the total production at that amount. Then over time, this cap would be lowered at a pre-determined rate. Companies that reduced their carbon output (through conservation, technology updates, or other means) faster than the law required would gain “carbon credits” for their extra reductions. Companies that didn’t meet the goals would either pay a tax on their overage or buy carbon credits from the greener companies to bring their production within limits. This gave the environmentalists the assurance that total carbon production would actually be reduced, while businesses had the freedom to determine how they would meet the goal.
As people realized that it wasn’t just companies that polluted, they began to look for ways to reduce their individual outputs. The cap and trade system offered a model to help. Just as a company can buy carbon credits to offset their pollution, an individual can buy “carbon offsets” to make up for the carbon production they can’t cut. The funds from the sale of these offsets goes to fund projects that reduce carbon output, such as tree planting, greener construction, or alternative power. (Totally coincidentally, Tom Dwyer Automotive has partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation to offer just this opportunity through their Green Tags program, which has already offset over a million pounds of carbon.)
Of course, the carbon offsets are only as effective as the companies backing them, and the value of carbon programs can differ drastically. Some companies transfer a high percentage of the cost to the offset projects and only take a small percentage for overhead. Others programs send smaller percentages to the target projects, fund ineffective projects, or are outright scams. The effectiveness of the programs can also vary depending on where the money is spent. Since carbon knows no borders it is just as important to reduce carbon sources halfway around the world as here in America, and your money may go farther overseas as well. For instance, it may cost $75 to remove one ton of carbon domestically, but the same $75 might remove 37.5 tons in China. This cost difference is one of the reasons that 85% of all carbon reduction projects today are in developing countries. Finally, conservation projects may be a perfectly viable carbon reduction method. It’s wonderful to replant trees, but conserving a rainforest is much better than replanting it. Algae in the oceans are responsible for half of all carbon-reducing photosynthesis worldwide, so preserving ocean the environments that make algae growth possible can be a critical carbon reduction project.
Carbon offsets have been likened to kicking a person but paying for hospitals while you do it. This may be a little cynical, but it brings up a good point. The purpose of carbon offsets is to reduce our overall carbon footprint, not to make us feel better about polluting. The most effective, cheapest, quickest way to eliminate carbon is to quit producing it. Carbon offsets are only helpful in mitigating the carbon we can’t eliminate, not the carbon we are unwilling to eliminate. No matter what, the first step to reducing our carbon output is to understand what makes up our carbon footprint. Only by understanding what our impact is can we make any rational steps to changing it.
