Carbon Offsets: Is It Too Late to Switch Off?
An offset is essentially a method of accounting. It’s a technique of rebalancing the pollution scales. In the past, offset systems have been helpful in addressing other environmental issues, such as nitrogen oxide air pollution, which contributes to acid rain. To minimise local air pollution, however, your offset must be located near the pollution source, such as a coal power station. Otherwise, the offset will have no effect on air quality. You can use them to reduce your personal carbon emissions (your “carbon footprint”) while also helping to create a more sustainable future.
A carbon offset allows a company, government, or individual to pay someone else to reduce or eliminate a certain amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Buying cleaner-burning cookstoves in underdeveloped nations to minimise deforestation for firewood, or funding a wind turbine generator to supplant fossil fuels on the electricity grid, are two examples. It can also be used to credit the restoration of a tropical forest that absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon offsets are an important instrument for addressing climate change because of their worldwide potential for action. Carbon offsets range in magnitude from a few tonnes purchased by an individual to gigatons purchased by national governments to satisfy their own goals. Carbon dioxide is emitted on a far bigger scale than other air pollutants, hence demand for offsets and prospects for offsets are both much higher.
More than 170 corporations have vowed to become carbon-neutral by the middle of the century, if not sooner, as a result of client demand and internal pressure. These private behemoths join 77 countries and over 100 cities in setting similar climate objectives, including the United Kingdom, the Marshall Islands, Costa Rica, and Sweden. Meeting these lofty goals will eventually necessitate complete decarbonization, which will be more difficult for some governments and businesses than others. Those that now rely on oil sales, natural gas heating, or coal-fired furnaces can begin making progress immediately by purchasing offsets. Importantly, the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from these projects is credited to the individual or government who purchased the offset, not the persons who built it or the location where it was created.
In the hierarchy of climate action, reducing emissions is almost always the first and most effective option. To put it another way, rather than purchasing offsets for your flight, see if you can completely avoid it. As a result, some environmentalists and campaigners see offset purchases as little more than greenwashing, especially when they come from fossil-fuel companies like BP, which has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The goal is to reduce emissions as quickly as feasible in order to limit climate change. While offsets can buy time, they can also cause delays at a moment when the globe is in desperate need of action. That raises another hypothetical: what would you do if you couldn’t buy offsets? Not buying offsets would push certain people, countries, and businesses to face their own emissions and take more active steps to reduce them. The ability to purchase offsets also creates a moral hazard, allowing polluters to continue producing greenhouse gases at will. This wastes valuable time that could be used to combat climate change.
All of this isn’t to say that carbon offsets aren’t useful in the battle against climate change; it just means that the offset’s primary advantage may not be the offset itself. This is not to argue that investing in programmes to safeguard natural ecosystems or deploying sustainable energy is a bad idea. It’s only that doing so doesn’t absolve the customer of responsibility for their part in climate change. If all other factors are equal, buying an offset is preferable to doing nothing, but it may not be the greatest way to spend your money if your goal is to protect the environment.
However, in order to minimise climate change, humanity must reduce their net carbon output to zero and even begin removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There aren’t enough carbon sinks to compensate for all of our emissions because there aren’t enough to offset every iota of carbon from human activities. As a result, the globe will have to continue to reduce overall emissions. Offsets can only buy us time until then, as work must be done to address climate change on a global scale. We won’t be able to buy our way into heaven with carbon offsets, but they may be able to slow our journey into hell.
