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Are Carbon Credits Doing Enough?

Carbon credits. Kind of like gift certificates for your conscience, aren't they? But can we actually buy our way to a better planet? The New York Times recently explored the canadian levitra for sale hipness of being "carbon-neutral" via purchasing carbon credits and best price on levitra came away less than impressed. Noting that:

A largely unregulated carbon-cutting business has sprung up. In this market, consultants or companies estimate a person's or company's output of greenhouse gases. Then, these businesses sell 'offsets,' which pay for projects elsewhere that void or sop up an equal amount of emissions â€” say, by planting trees or, as one new company proposes, fertilizing the ocean so algae can pull the gas out of the air. Recent counts by Business Week magazine and several environmental watchdog groups tally the trade in offsets at more than $100 million a year and growing blazingly fast.

Some folks say it's a nice, symbolic gesture to buy carbon credits, but not much more. The real work, they say, is in cutting energy use or just using renewable energy rather than paying off our debt to the environment with the wrong kind of green.

Where do you stand? Hard-liner? Credit buyer? A little of cialis costs each?

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Carbon credits are pointless.
written by rob, May 19, 2007
I have seen several TV programs recently, where a traveller offsets the generic levitra price carbon cost of their flight, by buying carbon credits, usually from someone in the third world, with a small carbon footprint.
This is completely pointless, if you are still producing the same amount of waste, it's just salving the conscience of not very bright rich people.
It could even make the carbon situation worse, by providing third world people with the resources to buy consumer goods, thus producing even more pollution.

Planting a tree is a better method, but no scheme I have seen, plants nearly enough trees for each flight. Bear in mind that few young trees grow to maturity and sequester the required amount of carbon.
written by Sam, May 19, 2007
I agree with the commenter above. The problem with these schemes is not the fundamental concept, but the cialis online 50mg way it operates in practice. And always will operate, I'd guess, due to the overwhelming political and commercial pressures for it to work that way. Companies and governments want their carbon credits cheaply - and so long as the public perception is that they work (which of course, everyone would like to believe for their own peace of mind), they couldn't care less about increasing their own costs by regulating them.

As it is, far, far too many of these schemes simply involve buying into some kind of already existing - and unthreatened - ecological asset, and attempting to sell its global warming value.

For example, I saw an article a couple of years ago about a company which was buying up existing Scottish forests, and selling 'carbon offsets' based not on the promise to plant more trees, but on the promise that it wasn't going to cut the trees down. It was 'protecting them' and 'ensuring 99 years of viagra no rx carbon offsetting'. Ignoring, of course, the fact that no-one was proposing to cut the trees down anyway, and since they were in a scenic area of the Highlands, no-one would have got permission to chop the things down anyway, even if there were any economic benefit to be gained from doing so.

We could easily 'offset' the entire world's carbon emissions by this company's logic, simply by promising to 'protect' trees in existing forests. However, this would barely make a shred of difference to the environment, except if the trees were threatened by logging - and since these would be the most expensive for the we like it generic viagra mexico carbon offsetting company to viagra medication online buy, they would also be the last to be protected. The whole process is merely shuffling bits of paper around and enriching the shareholders of this company.

The situation of 'buying' excess carbon credits from Africa and the best choice levitra dosage selling them to Europe is mentioned above is equally ludicrous. Even if the companies had not bought these carbon credits, Africa would not be polluting any more or less. It makes zero difference to the CO2 produced by Africa, and zero difference to Europe's emissions either, and so has no practical benefit in global warming terms at all. In fact by allowing corporations and governments to hide behind the green smokescreen generated, claiming to be 'carbon neutral', the whole thing is positively damaging.
written by Dave, May 20, 2007
Thanks for the feedback. I'd have to say I'm in your court--the sentimental value of companies' awareness, while exciting to some of purchase cialis soft tabs us more cynical ecogeeks who never thought even this many corporations would acknowledge responsibility, just doesn't come close to best price on viagra matching what could actually be done to cut back on power, provide one's own power via solar panels and turbines or anything else.
written by Dave Smith, May 22, 2007
I don't agree that carbon offsets are necessarily as useless as implied above.
Efficiency and reduction is the first and most important step, but offsets can be a valid contribution as well.
Where building a complete renewable energy source is uk cialis not feasible sending money to someone so that they can erect more wind turbines in another region does at least make some difference.
written by Catherine, May 22, 2007
Where are the gaurentees that our conscious saving dollars are being put to good use like wind turbines?
Do "Offset Credits" work at all?
written by Joe Levi, June 07, 2007
Does the concept of an "offset credit" even work at all?

For example, could Don Imus donate a certain amount to a minority scholarship fund to "offset" the damage done with his "ethnically damaging remarks"? Sounds absurd, right?

Why then is it logically acceptable to donate money to "environmentally friendly causes" to "offset" the damage done to the environment by "environmentally unfriendly behavior"?
Manufacture of Organic Menure
written by Manish K. Jain, September 26, 2007
Dear Sir,
we are manufacturer of Organic Menure yearly 100000Ton.
can we get carbon credit if yes please tell us how what is the system.
written by bob pederson, February 10, 2008
How many carbon credits is a average tree worth?

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