This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Melissa Mitchell, Administrative Assistant for the John Locke Foundation.
The latest craze for the global warming hysterics is “carbon offsets.” After reading an article in the July-August Audubon magazine, I found the entire subject of buying carbon offsets intriguing. Sitting high atop a mountain in the Andes, the author is feeling guilty about how much carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions his trip caused. He then calculates and buys carbon offsets that allow his trip to become carbon neutral. I was hooked. Just exactly what are carbon offsets? Who sells them? Why do they reduce global warming?
A quick Internet search provided 2 million hits. However, after reading some of the information about the purchase of carbon offsets, I was reminded of the Pardoner in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Chaucer uses physical and psychological profiles of each Pilgrim to illustrate the class discrimination and the ills of the 14th century. One of the pilgrims, the Pardoner, sells false religious relics and pardons that atone for a person’s sins. For the guilt-ridden global warming crowd, carbon offsets become the relics that atone for a lifestyle that they feel contributes to the warming of the planet.
Although the amount of information on the Internet was daunting, there is enough information to cause skepticism concerning the purchase of offsets. Certainly, Joel Schwartz’s policy report, A North Carolina Citizen’s Guide to Global Warming, negates much of what is being said by the sellers of carbon offsets. Within the last 10 years, selling carbon offsets has become a multimillion-dollar industry. Here is how it works. You go to one of the Web sites and find your carbon footprint. All of the sites have a calculator to help you learn how much CO2 your lifestyle contributes. They have charts for cars, homes, travel, and yes, weddings. I decided to plug in my car. Since I drive an SUV, I need to have a high level of guilt. What I found was that they calculated the miles per gallon (MPG) for your car. Since my car lists the MPG on the dash, I was irritated that their MPG was 4 miles below my average mileage. Some of the sites allow you to change the MPG, most do not. The rates vary, so I could pay as little as $29 or as much as $189 per year.
All the sites list projects they support. The most frequently listed are wind farms, biomass, and reforestation. Since the offset industry is almost totally unregulated, there is no guarantee that the projects are valid or significantly reduce global warming. None of the projects benefited North Carolina, but the guilt-ridden, hysterical global warming alarmists living in North Carolina can relax. Our North Carolina legislators have seen fit to atone for our sins. As Daren Bakst points out in his recent Spotlight, Electric Shock, North Carolinians will be paying higher taxes for projects in other states to reduce global warming.
Because the global warming alarmists believe that any climate change is caused by man, they also believe that certain actions by man will reverse or eliminate climate change. However, in their rush to cure the planet, many scientists in other fields believe that environmentalists may be creating more problems than they solve. Ornithologists are concerned that wind power kills birds and bats. Now, there is new evidence that biofuels might actually be worse than fossil fuels.
Finally, botanists are concerned that the trees being planted might also cause more harm than good, which, ironically is the topic of an article in the September-October Audubon magazine. Botanists worry that they are planting non-native plants that will harm the environment. Think Kudzu.
One has to admire the ingenuity of the sellers of carbon offsets. They have created a very lucrative business. But environmentalists are now concerned that the carbon offset industry will hinder their goal of reducing the use of fossil fuels. They argue that people will continue a lifestyle that is unhealthy for the planet because they purchase the correct light bulb or carbon offsets.
For those who are worried about global warming, just like the sinners of the 14th century who had the Pardoner and his false relics, they now have their carbon offset relics to atone for their sins of owning a big home, driving an SUV, or traveling around the globe.