FTC, NPR Take Up Carbon Offset Debate

NPR's Christopher Joyce on All Things Considered yesterday chimed in on the carbon offset debate with what has become a fairly predictable tone when it comes to media coverage on the topic: measured skepticism. The story was timely because the Federal Trade Commission is holding a workshop on carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates next week. (Our very own Eric Carlson, Executive Director, is a panelist for Session 5.)

We welcome more transparency and more education about the carbon offset industry, and we hope that the FTC workshop will help provide it. That said, we think NPR could have done a bit better tackling the subject. For instance, the piece claims that carbon offsetting is an industry run amuck and therefore consumers should be suspicious ("In the U.S., this trading is voluntary and no one is in charge. That worries consumer advocates.").

The truth is there are people in charge, like the Environmental Resources Trust, Green-e, and the Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance. Projects certified or verified by these organizations are held to strict standards, all of which are completely transparent and publicly available. Our projects are certified and verified by the standards developed by these organizations, and we stand by them.

The piece also makes a few questionable semantic choices, such as referring to the FTC’s workshop as an “investigation” (“So the FTC has decided to investigate”). Check out the workshop’s agenda on the FTC’s website. It doesn't look like an investigation to me.

Finally, the story says:

Some environmental groups say that instead of buying carbon offsets, Americans should just do the hard work themselves. Use less electricity, switch from coal to wind power, or drive less. But Eric Carlson, of Carbonfund, a company that trades in offsets, says it doesn't really matter who cuts carbon, who pays for those cuts, or who profits.

Profits? First off, Carbonfund.org isn’t a company—we’re a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), and I can personally assure readers that none of us is making a whole lot of money here.

And second, one of the steps the "environmental groups" advocate—switching from coal to wind power—is almost exactly the same as buying a carbon offset from us. You can either buy wind power from your utility to compensate for your electricity usage or you can buy it from us to compensate for your car, your plane flights, or your iPod. Either way, supporting clean energy is supporting clean energy and a ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere is a ton is a ton.

One more quibble: the but Joyce slips in before Eric’s name, which has the effect of casting him as against reduction, is an example of what I think of as the "journalistic but". You take two positions that aren't actually contrasting, or, as in this case, two choices that are not mutually exclusive-- reducing and offsetting-- and link them with a but. Voila! Conflict!

We'll be following developments at the FTC closely next week and will report back after attending the workshop. In the mean time, we invite readers to chime in!