eCO2pass

One of the popular sound bites in the discussion of global warming is comparing carbon offsets to the purchase of Papal indulgences in the old Catholic church. The logic is simple: Rich people used to be able to buy the right to sin by purchasing indulgences; now they can buy the right to pollute by purchasing carbon offsets.

And like most soundbites with simple logic, it’s absolutely actually illogical.

Papal indulgences were a system based on something intangible and subjective: sin. You could sin all you wanted, but if you had the money, you could avoid any shame or punishment. The “net level of sin,” if you will, was not actually reduced by the indulgences. It was a criminal and immoral system.

When it comes to CO2, on the other hand, you are dealing with something objective and tangible. Seen from the perspective of the atmosphere, all that matters is the net level of CO2 hanging around

So even if Al Gore sends x number of pounds of carbon into the atmosphere via his car and air travel, his efforts in educating the public on global warming—as well as subsidizing the forces that reduce CO2 via offsets—actually produce a profoundly negative net carbon footprint.

Put simply, Papal indulgences did not reduce the net level of sin; carbon offsets do (at least theoretically) reduce the net level of carbon.

Sure, from a psychological standpoint, offsets act like indulgences in that they reduce the guilt of overconsumption and can appear to sanction pollution. But if the net effect is keeping carbon under 500 ppm over the next 100 years, who the hell cares?

I ran across an article on the Chicago Tribune Online. Entitled “The state (by state) of 'green' hotels” it discusses the impact hotels have on the environment.

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An average-sized hotel purchases more products in a week than 100 families will in a year, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board, generating as much as 30 pounds of waste per room per day. The lodging industry in California also generates 112,000 tons of food waste, 2 percent of the state's total. To wash one pound of room linen takes approximately two gallons of water, according to Hilton Hotels Corp., and a typical occupied room uses 11.5 pounds of linens per day. A single large, fully occupied hotel with a typical stay of two nights can use more than 34,000 gallons just for laundering room linens.

The "greening" of the travel industry is a hot topic both for those in the industry and for travelers. More than a third of travelers surveyed in April by travel advice Web site Tripadvisor.com said that environmentally friendly tourism is a consideration when traveling. Though many hotels have been moving for more than a decade toward lessening their environmental impact through simple solutions such as the use of cards encouraging travelers to reuse towels and linens, a movement is afoot for states to take a more active role in identifying what constitutes a "green" hotel.

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Read the rest of the article.

Our first Guest Blogger post.

As an unapologetic liberal, but also a pragmatist, I'm glad this conversation is happening. The number one political issue for me is the perilous relationship between population growth, energy needs, carbon emissions and global warming. This is an issue that ignores borders, affects everyone, and will take a gargantuan effort to solve, using every tool in the proverbial shed.

What bothers me about the current debate is that there's too much of a "silver bullet" approach to thinking about it. Every lobbyist has a single interest in mind. The truth is far more complex. We need to keep ourselves under 500 ppm CO2 over the next 100 years and bring it down thereafter. There's no one solution to making this happen. It's not an "or" thing, it's an "and" thing.

We need wind power AND nuclear power. We need carbon taxes and CAFE standards, as well as conservation efforts and marketplace incentives. Restoring prairie land is good for carbon emissions, and that paints a pretty picture. But cap and trade and carbon offsetting (down to the individual consumer) is also an important part of the mix.

Some of my friends don't agree with this. They're skeptical of anything that involves the free market. They probably don't know that a Climate Exchange exists and would scoff if they did. My response is that there isn't time to do this exactly the way you'd want it to happen. I'd say the same thing to those in the Right who don't think there should be any interference via the government, or subsidies of any kind.

Things need to happen fast. Wind energy, as one example, can play a huge role quickly. But for that to happen, you need to make it affordable for companies to produce the materials and set up the infrastructure. One way of doing that is buying carbon offsets that contribute to subsidizing the infrastructure.

If there's any issue that is NOT political, it's this one. It's not about the planet, it's about the species. We have to think of ourselves, humbly, as animals. What are we good at? What are we bad at? What do we respond to? What do we ignore? I think cap and trade has a role to play. I think it's something people can get behind and feel good about. And in the incredibly complex world economic system we've created, it's one of the ways to work within that system, cut through the clutter and achieve bottom line emissions reductions.

~Marc Conklin

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