Jan 26, 2007 9:49 am US/Central
Good Question: Can We Pay Off Our Pollution?
by Ben Tracy
(WCCO)
-
-
Some companies will now sell us carbon offsets to make our behavior carbon neutral.
CBS
What do the Dave Matthews Band, a London bank and Ben & Jerry's have in common?
They all claim to be "carbon neutral." They pay money to offset the amount of greenhouse gases they create.
"Carbon is a problem and we want to get rid of it," said one woman in the Twin Cities.
We burn it out the back of our cars, send it up the smokestack and create it by heating our homes. All that carbon dioxide is now heating up the globe.
"It's going to get us in the end if we don't do something about it now," said another woman.
Some companies will now sell us carbon offsets to make our behavior carbon neutral.
"This idea of offset is rather than us not emitting CO2, or releasing CO2, we pay somebody else not to," said Dr. Steve Taff, a member of the Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment at the University of Minnesota.
Other countries cap the amount of CO2 businesses can emit. So if one business wants to emit more than the cap, it has to buy carbon credits from a business that emits less. It can make a real difference.
Offsets are now available to individuals. For example, flying roundtrip to Florida from Minnesota creates about 1,300 pounds of CO2 per passenger. The travel Web site Expedia will let travelers pay about $16 to offset their emissions. The money goes to things that reduce carbon like wind farms or planting trees.
"If more and more people start to say, 'Hey! I'm carbon neutral. Are you carbon neutral too?' We might start saying that to our governments and that could create real change," said Taff.
However environmentalists are divided. Some say the idea of offsets raises awareness, but others say they are similar to a Papal indulgence that allows us to feel better about ourselves without changing our behavior.
"What it's saying is I'm not going to change what I'm doing but I'm going to pay somebody else to clean up my mess," said Taff. "It would be better for us to sin less and then we don't have to worry about it in the first place."
There is also very little oversight of these companies promising to offset our emissions. Some experts say it would be better to donate directly to an environmental organization and cut out the middleman.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
