Climate Progress

We’ve had doubts. Research says we should:

Scientists at Duke University bathed plots of North Carolina pine trees in extra carbon dioxide every day for 10 years and found that while the trees grew more tissue, only the trees that received the most water and nutrients stored enough carbon dioxide to offset the effects of global warming.

Bottom line: “if a drought takes hold, trees won’t be able to do much in the way of carbon storage.”

One researcher noted, “If water availability decreases at the same time that carbon dioxide increases, then we might not have a net gain in carbon sequestration.” Well, climate change is projected to decrease water availability in many parts of the world, including the American West.

Other interesting findings:

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The British TV show Dispatches disses offsets in “The Great Green Smoke Screen” (downloadable here).

The show reports “flaws in a series of carbon offsetting schemes intended to make good the global warming gases emitted by flights and other polluting activities.” What kind of flaws?

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Offsets are spreading like kudzu:

G.E. will introduce the GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard, which allows cardholders to forgo a 1 percent cash rebate on purchases and earmark that amount for projects that reduce greenhouse gases.

General Electric does acknowledge some of the oxymoronic irony of pushing an Earth-friendly credit card:

It’s important to keep in mind that we can’t “shop away” global climate change.

Duh! U.S. (and Chinese) greenhouse emissions are so high thanks in part to credit cards, which have allowed us to consume far beyond our means (and to consume huge amounts of products made in carbon-intensive China).

But there is more irony. As Michael J. Brune, executive director for the Rainforest Action Network, notes:

It’s ironic. G.E. supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create.

G.E. is not the only one offsetting consumer purchases. Check out ClimateCooler. At least they specificy what offests they will be buying:

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My mother happened to take Amtrak down to DC Friday — the day they were handing out trees to offset train travel, which is how I heard of this dubious program.

My mother received a transparent plastic cylinder containing a small Colorado Blue Spruce with the label “plant this tree and offset the carbon output from 14,000 miles of train travel.”

Yes, like the Pope, Amtrak never got the “trees are lousy offsets” memo from here or Gristmill. Fortunately, Amtrak is the energy efficient way to travel inland, and trees are great things to have — though it is a bit odd handing out the state tree of Colorado, which is native to the West, in DC.

Anyway, the plastic cylinder directs us to “Learn more @ whistlestop.Amtrak.com” where we meet “Arte the environmental engineer,” probably the lamest corporate environmental mascot ever. Arte is named for Amtrak Recognizes the Environment — yes, we all recognize the environment as it whizzes by us at 60 mph. More strangely, Arte is a typical leaf, but the Blue Spruce is an evergreen conifer.

Well, at least Amtrak isn’t handing out iron for ocean fertilization.

This offset business has given me my 15 minutes of fame. I was extensively quoted in a recent article on the subject, “Are green-minded folks getting their money’s worth?” But first, here’s a supporting view from the piece:

A spokesman for the Sierra Club says the group does not suggest members buy carbon offsets.

“I think it’s wonderful that people are thinking about their carbon footprint,” says Josh Dorner. “But the carbon-offsets market is completely unregulated, so it’s questionable whether it is really doing anything to reduce global warming. So what we recommend is that people take other steps in their life, such as driving a smaller car or unplugging appliances when they are not in use, that are verifiably productive.”

Here’s the part I’m quoted in:

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I know you’ve all been eagerly waiting for this–don’t worry, I don’t have many more rules. I got sidetracked by last week’s offset hearing.

Offset projects should deliver climate benefits with high confidence — that’s a key reason trees make lousy offsets, especially non-urban, non-tropical trees. An even more dubious source of offsets is geo-engineering, which is “the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment” to counteract the effects of global warming.

As John Holdren, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted in 2006, “The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.“

The only reason for this rule is that a company, Planktos, wants to sell offset credits for carbon that is supposedly sequestered when iron is seeded in the ocean to create algae blooms. Seriously. (This is the same company that is selling trees as offsets to the Vatican.)

This is such a dubious idea that 18 leading experts from 13 countries, who comprise the Scientific Steering Committee of the Surface Ocean–Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS)–a leadin group studying the ocean-atmosphere system–went to the trouble of issuing a “Position Statement on Large-Scale Ocean Fertilisation” last month:

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This online climate calculator from UC Berkeley provides a much more comprehensive picture of your total greenhouse gas emissions than most online calculators.

They also provide links to six carbon offset sellers (though two of the links are currently bad) should you decide to go carbon neutral. I am not endorsing any of those, although I will say that the CEOs from two of the offset companies on the list, Native Energy and Terrapass, were at the Markey hearing and made a very good case for their companies.

Apparently the Vatican doesn’t read Climate Progress or even Gristmill. They just bought themselves a bunch of trees to offset their entire greenhouse gas emissions.

Okay, some don’t like the papal indulgence analogy, though others do. And to be fair, the press release notes the Vatican is “steadily reducing its carbon footprint with energy efficiency and solar power”–and the new trees in Hungary apparently satisfy the relatively tough criteria for “EU JI Track 1 approval.”

But 100% new trees is just not a good offset strategy as I and others have repeatedly argued — and especially trees as far north as Hungary. Also the company they are buying from, Planktos/KlimaFa, is part of the same company that is hoping to sell dubious geo-engineering as offsets (more on that in a later post).

We just can’t indulge ourselves in the false hope that cheap trees are a viable solution to the climate crisis.

Yes, I know, you can’t get enough of offsets. I’ll post a link to the testimony when it is up — and I’ll post my hearing notes at that time.

Chairman Markey (D-MA) sent a letter to the FTC and others urging them to look at the carbon offset market and develop guidelines to protect consumers. More from the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warminge here.

E&E Daily (subs. req’d) ran a long story this morning on the letter and the hearing, which I reprint below:

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Everybody seems to be writing long, thoughtful articles on offsets these days. Greenwire (subs. req’d) has a good piece on what Live Earth did to offset its emissions. Here’s what they say:
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