Carbon Offset Buyers Go Beyond Surface Green

by Emily Gertz
Is buying personal carbon offsets for dirty-fueled travel an effective way to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the Earth? And does buying them amount to an indulgence, an excuse for buyers to avoid making more substantial changes in how they live, or demanding sane climate policies?
These are hot [...]

by Emily Gertz
Is buying personal carbon offsets for dirty-fueled travel an effective way to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the Earth? And does buying them amount to an indulgence, an excuse for buyers to avoid making more substantial changes in how they live, or demanding sane climate policies?

These are hot (ha) questions lately. As the “green is black” moment moves beyond its early days into a tumultuous adolesence, providers of carbon offsets are easy targets for scrutiny, since their product is an abstract offering: buy this concept and (we promise!) save the Earth.

In some quarters, there’s nothing more vital than proving the Green Emperor wears no clothes. But the fact of that sort of narrow self-interest doesn’t mean we should ignore the questions raised by the personal carbon offset business: because if people do think buying a carbon offset (or an organic cotton shirt, or nontoxic bathtub cleaner) is making enough of a personal change to slow global warming, then never mind encouraging the complicated or difficult lifestyle shifts that would make a bigger impact; or, demanding fast and effective systemic changes from our political and corporate leaders.

It’s also a question of consumer rights: people ought to get what they pay for. And if they get ripped off instead, that may make them just that much more cynical about whether they can or need to change anything in their lives or the life of the nation to solve the climate crisis.

TerraPass has released the results of a customer survey of those who purchase its carbon offsets. The company got a statistically valid sample (it emailed the survey to 11,000 customers; just over 2,000 sent it back), and even allowing the subjective bias of the company, the results are encouraging: of TerraPass customers who answered the survey, 6% have installed solar panels at home — over two times the national average. 16% drive hybrids (which are just 2.4% of new cars sold in the US this year); around a quarter of respondents bicycle to work or take mass transit — again, significantly higher than overall national rates. And half the respondents said they have contacted a political representative about climate change.

TerraPass says the survey results bury for good the naysayer argument that carbon offsets are the 21st century equivalent of chuch indulgences. A significant proportion of those who buy carbon offsets, the company says, are cutting their energy use in many other ways as well.

The numbers also reveal a constituency for a sane national climate policy — good news for environmentalists in both political parties, as well as the realists who see the sense of accounting and planning for climate risk.

Activists across the spectrum of public health, clean energy and enviro issues should also take note. Translating that gesture of contacting a politician about global warming — presumably writ large across the nation’s growing number of green-hued consumers — into votes for the environment ought to be on the agendas of every eco-advocate.