One of the proposed ‘solutions’ to global warming is the sale of carbon offsets. The basic idea behind carbon offsets is that if you have a lifestyle that produces a lot of carbon emissions, and you don’t want to change that lifestyle, in theory you can instead buy carbon offsets to make yourself ‘carbon neutral.’

The money paid to buy carbon offsets goes to fund projects that reduce or eliminate greenhouse gases. Your carbon-offset money might go to a reforestation project, or towards increasing the energy efficiency of a public building, or to help a public utility purchase greener equipment to produce greener energy, or to any number of green projects.

Right now, carbon offsets are voluntary. You can purchase an offset equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide for about $4. This means that the average family can become carbon-neutral for around $100, but does this program effectively reduce greenhouse gases?
I suppose that it’s a good thing that carbon offset money is used to fund environmental projects, but my concern is that the message conveyed by the carbon offset program is that you can buy enough carbon offsets to become ‘carbon neutral,’ then go about business as usual. In effect, you’ve excused your carbon emissions by passing the buck on down the line, rather than by making any major lifestyle changes to address the problem firsthand.
I believe that if we are to survive on this planet, sweeping change has to be made at a grassroots level. We have to rebuild our lifestyles from the ground up, a step at a time. The carbon-offset program feels a little too much like a ‘band-aid’ solution. Voluntary offsets seem to be a way to overindulge and not feel guilty about itsort of like the practice of the Church selling ‘indulgences’ in the Middle Ages.
Another problem with carbon offsets is that since this is a new, emerging market, there is little or no regulation. Providers may not always do what they say they do, and it’s difficult if not impossible to evaluate whether they’re keeping their promises. There have been a few moves towards establishing a certification process for carbon offsets, but so far not much progress has been made.
I suppose that carbon offset programs are a good thing in that they have raised awareness of the problems of greenhouse gas emissions, but at best such programs are only temporary solutions until industries worldwide learn to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through improved technology and wiser, more sustainable business practices.
Chuck Hall is a Sustainability Consultant and author. His latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, is now available at the Culture Artist Web site at www.cultureartist.org. You may contact Chuck by email at: chuck@cultureartist.org.

by Chuck Hall

I get a lot of feedback from readers of this column. By far, the majority of these comments are positive, but I occasionally get negative ones as well. These negative comments almost inevitably surface when I write about global warming. There is a lot of intense anger about this subject out there. I’m a bit puzzled about why this is so, especially when you take into consideration the fact that the changes being suggested to fight global warming are chances that we will eventually have to make anyway if we are to survive on this planet.

I wonder if some of this anger comes from the fear of giving up convenience. The chief objection I hear about making choices for green living is that such choices take too much time and money. But do they really? Have we really considered the hidden costs of ‘status quo’ living?

For example, consider making your own biodiesel fuel. It takes an hour or so to make enough fuel for a week. This is an hour you wouldn’t have to spend if you bought fuel at the local gas station. Since biodiesel costs much less, you’ve saved more than enough money to make up for the lost hour, when you consider the amount of time you’d have to give up to your job to buy diesel from a service station.

The time value of money can even be illustrated by something as simple as washing dishes. Most people nowadays have dishwashers, for the convenience. They seem to save time, but do they really? I can wash a load of dishes by hand in about fifteen minutes. It takes another five minutes or so to put them away once they’ve dried. When we had a dishwasher, it took about five minutes to load, and about five minutes to unload. It would seem that the dishwasher saved about ten minutes of time, but the hidden costs include the amount of time that I had to work to buy the dishwasher in the first place, plus the amount of time I had to spend at work to pay the extra utility costs (electricity and much more water) to run the dishwasher.

The time value of money works the other way around too. For example, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) cost four or five times as much as regular incandescent light bulbs. This sounds expensive if the only thing you’re considering is the up-front cost, but if you dig a little deeper, you find that while CFLs may cost up to five times as much as incandescent bulbs, they also last five to seven times longer than incandescent bulbs, and they use much less electricity. The average CFL can save you as much as $30-$50 over the life of the bulb!

There are many more examples of the hidden costs of status quo living vs. green living. Next time you pass up a more sustainable choice because you think it’ll take too much time or money, ask yourself first if you’ve considered all the hidden costs of both alternatives.

Chuck Hall is a Sustainability Consultant and author. His latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, is now available at the Culture Artist Web site at www.cultureartist.org. You may contact Chuck by email at: chuck@cultureartist.org.

by Chuck Hall

A. Whitney Brown said, “I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals. I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants.”

All kidding aside, some people give do up eating meat because they love animals. Others do it for health reasons. There are many health benefits to a vegetarian diet, but did you know that there are also benefits for the environment? The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations formed the Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) to study the impact of the livestock industry on the environment. The report released by LEAD was startling.

One way that cattle production impacts the environment is in the availability of fresh drinking water. It takes up to 1000 pounds of water to produce one pound of beef. This is forty to fifty times the amount of water needed to produce a pound of vegetable protein! As the human population of the planet continues to rise, the water supply remains finite. Fresh drinking water available for human consumption will become more and more scarce. Additionally, as the planet continues to heat up, weather patterns are shifting, making it harder and harder to find fresh water sources. The less water we can use in feeding ourselves, the more water will be available for other uses.

Carnivorous eating habits also contribute to the loss of woodlands and rain forests worldwide. Americans who eat meat are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per year than those who don’t, according to a 2007 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Deforestation for the purpose of creating pastureland for grazing cattle plays a large part in this figure. Fewer trees mean more carbon dioxide.

The use of energy from fossil fuel power plants is also a major factor in beef production. The beef industry uses this energy to produce fertilizers used to grow grain for cattle, to pump water for the cattle, and to run slaughterhouses and processing plants. According to the FAO report, the beef industry is responsible for around 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. This is more greenhouse emission than caused by all other transportation put together. Researchers Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martinat the University of Chicago concluded that when weighing all the factors of the FAO report, the average meat-eating American produces 1.5 tons more of carbon dioxide than the average vegetarian American. Reducing our meat consumption can clearly cut down on greenhouse gases.

"It doesn't have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan," says Dr. Eshel. "If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you've already made a substantial difference."

You may read the LEAD report in its entirety here: http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf.

Chuck Hall is a Sustainability Consultant and author. His latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, is now available at the Culture Artist Web site at www.cultureartist.org. You may contact Chuck by email at: chuck@cultureartist.org.