Activists from the Camp for Climate Action have simultaneously targeted the offices of two separate carbon offset companies. The protestors are dressed as red herrings in order to highlight that carbon offset schemes are a dangerous distraction from taking effective climate action.
This morning, the offices of two high profile carbon offset companies in different cities – the Carbon Neutral Company in London and Climate Care in Oxford - have been disrupted.
The protestors are colourfully dressed as red herrings to symbolise the fact that carbon offset schemes are corrupting the climate change debate, taking attention away from effective responses to the threat of climate change and conning the general public. Their aim is to disrupt the day-to-day running of the offices and to raise awarness about the ineffectiveness of carbon-offset schemes – especially among well meaning office staff who may not realize the damage their work is doing to the fight to prevent runaway global warming.
Carbon offsetting doesn’t work because:
We cannot know what emissions have been avoided as a result of renewable energy projects – any hypotheses are guesswork. Therefore we cannot possibly calculate how much it would cost us to buy those savings – offset companies are selling us nothing but hot air.
Many schemes for ‘neutralising’ our emissions – such as tree planting – have been completely discredited, being scientifically illiterate and based on invented savings and . Yet companies such as Climate Care and Carbon Neutral continue to use them.
Real offsets would have to save the same amount of carbon within the same time frame as it is released. Trees are assumed by the offset companies themselves to take at least 99 years to absorb the carbon emitted in a 2 hour flight. Even if it did work, it would be like filling a bathtub with a bucket while trying to empty it with a thimble; the bath will soon overflow.
Most techno-fix offset schemes are based in the developing world. Even if every poor nation on the planet went carbon-free today, industrialised nations would still have to slash our carbon emissions if we are to have any hope of preventing catastrophic climate change. Emissions from developing nations are not the problem.
“Carbon offset companies are selling well-intentioned consumers a dangerous peace of mind by pretending that they can make emissions disappear” said Theo Middleton, one of the activists in the Climate Care office. “Climate Care and BA have teamed up to offer fliers a false opportunity to buy their way out of their responsibility to the climate.”
“Carbon offsets are ineffective, based on dubious science and lead people to believe they
are helping when they are not – the concept and the practice are a con,” said Sophie Nathan, who is taking part in the Carbon Neutral Company invasion. “Real climate action involves taking direct responsibility for personal emissions levels as well as engaging in
political organisation for wider change.”
Notes for Editors
Carbon offset companies have been on the receiving end of a great deal of negative publicity in the last year. This is the second time in 2007 that the Carbon Neutral Company has had its offices occupied by environmental activists.Both companies were also negatively portrayed in a recent Channel 4 documentary on the offsets industry
and in a report put out earlier in the year by the Amsterdam-based think tank, the Transnational Institute. New Internationalist magazine focused on the debate in July last year, exposing ineffective and damaging offset methods for fighting climate change.
This is big business - British Airways reported a £620m pre-tax profit for the year ending March 2006, a 20 per cent increase on the previous year, despite the increase in fuel costs during the period, and its short haul service moved into profit for the first time in a decade. This was a period of expansion and profitability as much for Climate Care as it was for British Airways. In July 2006, Climate Care’s David Wellington wrote that “in the past 10 to 12 months we have seen a 10-fold increase in sales,” and that 85 per cent of this growth was in “online sales for offsetting flight emissions”.
i
see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6382253.stm
ii
see
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/the+great+green+smokescreen/589267
iii
“BA Profits Up by 20%,” 24 May 2006, from the Business Travel
Europe website
iv
E Addkey, “Boom in Green Holidays as Ethical Travel Takes Off,”
The Guardian, 17 July 2006
The protestors are colourfully dressed as red herrings to symbolise the fact that carbon offset schemes are corrupting the climate change debate, taking attention away from effective responses to the threat of climate change and conning the general public. Their aim is to disrupt the day-to-day running of the offices and to raise awarness about the ineffectiveness of carbon-offset schemes – especially among well meaning office staff who may not realize the damage their work is doing to the fight to prevent runaway global warming.
Carbon offsetting doesn’t work because:
We cannot know what emissions have been avoided as a result of renewable energy projects – any hypotheses are guesswork. Therefore we cannot possibly calculate how much it would cost us to buy those savings – offset companies are selling us nothing but hot air.
Many schemes for ‘neutralising’ our emissions – such as tree planting – have been completely discredited, being scientifically illiterate and based on invented savings and . Yet companies such as Climate Care and Carbon Neutral continue to use them.
Real offsets would have to save the same amount of carbon within the same time frame as it is released. Trees are assumed by the offset companies themselves to take at least 99 years to absorb the carbon emitted in a 2 hour flight. Even if it did work, it would be like filling a bathtub with a bucket while trying to empty it with a thimble; the bath will soon overflow.
Most techno-fix offset schemes are based in the developing world. Even if every poor nation on the planet went carbon-free today, industrialised nations would still have to slash our carbon emissions if we are to have any hope of preventing catastrophic climate change. Emissions from developing nations are not the problem.
“Carbon offset companies are selling well-intentioned consumers a dangerous peace of mind by pretending that they can make emissions disappear” said Theo Middleton, one of the activists in the Climate Care office. “Climate Care and BA have teamed up to offer fliers a false opportunity to buy their way out of their responsibility to the climate.”
“Carbon offsets are ineffective, based on dubious science and lead people to believe they
are helping when they are not – the concept and the practice are a con,” said Sophie Nathan, who is taking part in the Carbon Neutral Company invasion. “Real climate action involves taking direct responsibility for personal emissions levels as well as engaging in
political organisation for wider change.”
Notes for Editors
Carbon offset companies have been on the receiving end of a great deal of negative publicity in the last year. This is the second time in 2007 that the Carbon Neutral Company has had its offices occupied by environmental activists.Both companies were also negatively portrayed in a recent Channel 4 documentary on the offsets industry
and in a report put out earlier in the year by the Amsterdam-based think tank, the Transnational Institute. New Internationalist magazine focused on the debate in July last year, exposing ineffective and damaging offset methods for fighting climate change.
This is big business - British Airways reported a £620m pre-tax profit for the year ending March 2006, a 20 per cent increase on the previous year, despite the increase in fuel costs during the period, and its short haul service moved into profit for the first time in a decade. This was a period of expansion and profitability as much for Climate Care as it was for British Airways. In July 2006, Climate Care’s David Wellington wrote that “in the past 10 to 12 months we have seen a 10-fold increase in sales,” and that 85 per cent of this growth was in “online sales for offsetting flight emissions”.
i
see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6382253.stm ii
see
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/the+great+green+smokescreen/589267 iii
“BA Profits Up by 20%,” 24 May 2006, from the Business Travel
Europe website
iv
E Addkey, “Boom in Green Holidays as Ethical Travel Takes Off,”
The Guardian, 17 July 2006
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
Woops! Wrong target.
20.08.2007 12:26
Carbon offsetting if done right and, importantly, seen as just one tool amongst many (and not *the* answer to all our problems) DOES make a difference and does help to put a brake on carbon emission increases. Climate Care is one of the better companys that do this. Most of their projects all aim to bring sustainable technologies to people that benefit from them most and improve their communities at the same time. They don't do much tree planting as you seem to imply.
Look at one of these projects and tell me what is wrong:
I disagree that the amount of CO2 reduction these projects bring is not measurable. They are eminently measurable. If you replace a gas-stove with a bio-brick burner you can say with great confidence what the CO2 savings are.
This article is inacurate, and by discouraging people from using offsets, is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I do agree that offsetting shouldn't be used an an excuse not to change the way we live, so we should be encouraging people to lower their energy usage AND offsetting what they can't.
Wrong target. I can think of a thousand that would have been better.
Bik
Bik
Well done red herrings!
20.08.2007 19:33
and it helps BP to "offset" in some upspecified way (no further details on the website).
I'm sure you're right. I'm sure some offsetting projects make an immediate positive difference to the lives of disadvantaged people in developing countries. Giving a poor family a solar cooker, for example, is going to be a superb thing to do if it saves women or kids having to waste hours and risk their lives collecting so much wood fuel. But that doesn't mean it makes any difference to climate change. It doesn't really matter what end result the offsetting has if it's helping to greenwash the more broadly destructive activities of these companies or perpetuate business-as-usual. It's not actually leading to a net reduction in the damage these companies are doing. That's why it's a red herring.
Do we honestly think for one moment that BP is offsetting for anything other than greenwash reasons?
If you do, refresh your memory of this nice little story from The Guardian in Dec 2005:
"Seen those BP ads on TV and in the press? Impressed that the oil giant is getting the message on climate change? Think again. BP is also running a big advertising campaign in the US to coincide with the Montreal climate talks. Both versions have the same graphics, the same nifty tune, the same style. But whereas we Brits are told to "work out your carbon footprint - it's a start", the American consumer is told: "We're investing $15bn in finding new oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico - it's a start."
John Vidal, Guardian, Dec 7, 2005.
Chris W.
chrisw