If you're Canadian you probably already know who David Suzuki is. If not, check out his Wikipedia entry. Summary: an internationally respected scientist turned environmental activist and host of the long-running popular science program The Nature of Things.
So why am I going on about him? A long time climate change activist, he recently turned his attention to carbon offsets. In a succinct, direct piece, he explains carbon offsets and dispatches that old chestnut about offsets being a license to pollute:But as with anything new, there's been some misunderstanding around carbon offsets. For example, they've been criticized as "papal indulgences", or "buying your way out".
There it is in a nutshell. I can see why Canadians love this guy!
I see it differently. First of all, carbon offset are not an excuse for not reducing our emissions, but using high quality offsets — like those that meet the Gold Standard — can be an innovative way to deal with emissions that you aren't able to reduce yourself.
Friday, February 29, 2008
David Suzuki Weighs In On Carbon Offsets
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3 comments:
i'm canadian and i don't love him - after his intemperate remarks at mcgill university recently my ire jumped on a chart that resembles a hockey stick - the difference being that my ire is real.
a poll (taken this week) from a major canadian newspaper demonstrated less than 50% support for him.
you can fool some of the people some of the time.......
As a freight company, we've done much within our backoffice, dock and trucks (bio-diesel, anti-idle, SmartWay, etc.)
As a basic operating principle we reduce emissions from optimal truck routing and consolidation of cargo. But this efficiency stuff is done by all freight companies and we have been doing it for eons. The more freight we can load into a truck, the more money we make. Business 101. More volume with lower cost per unit of cargo. If you want to call freight efficiency "green" you can, but let's not hold that concept out as some great innovation that only tree huggers espouse. It isn't, efficiency is about profit.
So what more can we do?
In our case, the next thing we can do is to offset the CO2 emissions that we just can't get away from.
So for those that "poo-poo" carbon offsets, you need to look more closely at the intent of the purchasers.
There are those of us that are doing as much as we can thru our processes and efficiencies, but choose to do more for the emissions that we cannot just stop creating. We can't pull our trucks off the road.
This is why carbon offsets make sense for some businesses and those that trash the offset concept are just hurting companies that are simply trying to mitigate what just cannot be reduced.
While there will always be some companies that just want to buy their way out of pollution, there are others that use CO2 offsets as a "step further".
So for the bashers out there, let's direct our fire to the companies that abuse the offsets, rather than trash the entire concept of offsetting.
Trashing offsets as a category is stupid, short-sighted and pissing in the clean water of the companies that are doing the right thing.
For those of you that have processes to improve, go for it. For those of us that already have made strides in the processes, why not offset to do more??
"Suzuki said that scientists who deny climate change are 'shills' for big corporations."
I'm a skeptic, and my bank account hasn't increased one iota lately, save my paychecks from McDonald's. What kind of screwball is this?
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