The True Cost of Carbon Offsetting

By Inika Harikrishnan

As the product of centuries of industrial development, greenhouse gas emissions are the main perpetrator of climate change. From extreme tropical storms, wildfires, severe droughts, and heat waves to negative impacts on crop production and depletion of animal habitats, everything comes down to these emissions. Naturally, one seeks to reduce their impact, giving birth to the modern practice of carbon offsetting. Carbon offsetting essentially means that an individual or company compensates for their own carbon footprint by investing in a practice that will help prevent the generation of equivalent emissions from its alternative. To make it simpler, consider the example of an airline producing some amount of greenhouse gasses in a year and then planting enough trees to absorb the same amount of emissions. In the age of industries and modernization, it is virtually impossible to have zero emissions. But what if we were able to reabsorb all the CO2 being produced? That would leave us with net zero emissions, a goal that many companies and industries have promised to reach.

Sounds simple enough, but how well does carbon offsetting work, really?

Offsetting isn’t a horrible practice when it comes to what it offers- planting new trees, switching to energy efficient technology, delivering environmentally sound appliances to developing countries- they’re all good things. Except this isn’t what offsetting is meant to do. Its real purpose of ‘cancelling out’ the greenhouse gasses being produced isn’t met at all.

Planting trees, for example, is always great in itself, but to use it as a compensation for released emissions isn’t really practical. For starters, quantifying the amount of greenhouse gasses we produce in activities such as airplane travel, electricity use, and other large scale events isn’t always an easy task. Nor is the quantification of the amount of CO2 that planted trees will end up absorbing. There are always the risks of felling and accidental destruction through natural disasters. Even more, the amount of time that a sapling will take to absorb enough CO2 to make a difference makes this practice impractical too. Changes in climate mean that droughts and higher temperatures will strain forests in the future. There is a risk that trees planted as a part of offsetting projects will die prematurely, returning the absorbed CO2 back into the ecosystem. Moreover, destroying an entire ecosystem in one place and replanting the trees in a plantation system does more harm than good. In the long run, offsetting projects may end up reducing biodiversity and depleting natural habitats.

Of course, the drawbacks of offsetting don’t end at its inefficiency. There is also the issue of ‘climate colonialism.’

The United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, the largest offsetting project in the world, had registered over 8,500 projects by July 2014, issuing 1.4 billion carbon credits known as Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), with each CER equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent. However, the lack of integrity of its environmental projects and its continuous ignorance of human rights in the Global South have made it a subject of scrutiny. Consider the example of the Honduran Aguan Biogas Recovery Palm Oil project carried out in 2011. More than 23 farmers with legitimate claims to the land intended for use in the project were assassinated ,and the evidence of these killings was available publically too. Still, the project was carried out and CDM’s promise to consult affected groups remained unfulfilled. In another instance in September 2012, a fact finding mission regarding a carbon offsetting project on the Tabasara river was carried out and it was determined that the project would undermine the subsistence and way of life of the Ngäbe indigenous group, flooding their lands, homes, and historical, religious, and cultural sites. Nevertheless, decisions regarding the project were taken without the consultation of the Ngäbe people.

The cheaper cost of setting up these projects in the Global South also means that the population in these countries will be disproportionately burdened with the task of compensating for the emissions of richer countries.

Other than that, there is also an inherent flaw in the concept of ‘making up for’ the greenhouse emissions being produced. According to the way that environmental journalist George Monbiot explains it, "You buy yourself a clean conscience by paying someone else to undo the harm you are causing."

It isn’t enough to simply offset what you produce. Environmental degradation cannot be solved until these emissions are reduced in the first place. As consumers become more and more aware of the environmental impact of their actions, companies whose entire setup is based on ecological destruction use carbon offsetting as a way to make their services more palatable. Not only do companies greenwash their products and services, but they also push the responsibility of compensation onto their consumers. However, the truth is that companies and corporations are the ones producing these emissions. The shifted responsibility also gives rise to another problem; it assigns a cost to environmental repair. Taking a flight will result in the same amount of emissions for anybody, but the amount that it takes to offset the emissions for that flight will mean different things for different people. For a richer person, the cost may equate to a day’s pay, and amount to a month’s pay for someone on the poorer side of the spectrum. The poor person is ultimately less likely to partake in these harmful activities, while those who have the money will simply blow it as a means to atone for their sins.

Being ‘net zero’ doesn’t do anything to combat climate change unless it is coupled with the active reduction of emissions. None of this is to say that carbon offsetting is an entirely useless practice; it simply isn’t enough to fight the crisis that we are face-to-face with today.

Graphics: by Yamila Frej