Over at the Stash, Noam has a thoughtful post on whether it's okay to "offset" carbon-dioxide pollution—say, by buying credits to plant trees when you take an airplane trip:
I guess it comes down to how you feel about pollution--or, at least, gratuitous pollution (that is, pollution with no obvious economic or utilitarian benefit--like buying an SUV just because you like the look of it, not because you need one to navigate tough terrain). If it's immoral to pollute gratuitously, then buying an offset doesn't somehow make it better, any more than buying a papal indulgence or an infidelity offset wipes away a sin. But if the only problem with polluting gratuitously is that it results in pollution, then Frank's right and the offset conceit is fine. I guess I'm inclined toward the former view. It doesn't surprise me that an economist would tend toward the latter.
I think I'd side with Robert Frank here. The act of burning carbon, even for gratuitous expenditures like SUVs, has positives (creating economic growth) and negatives (greenhouse gases that are wreaking havoc on the global climate). The problem here is that people who burn carbon don't pay any price at all for those negatives, so the best thing to do would be to slap a price on that externality.
But it's difficult to calculate what that externality is, precisely, so the next best thing is to use a cap-and-trade system to limit overall carbon concentrations in the atmosphere below what the scientific consensus deems a safe level (roughly, 450 parts per million), and then let the market decide the best price. Under that system, offsets that actually work are quite acceptable—if you emit X tons of carbon but "pay" for it by purchasing offsets and preventing X tons of carbon from being emitted, then your activity is technically carbon neutral. And if you use offsets to prevent 2X tons from being emitted, you've reduced overall emissions.
The main dilemma is that these offsets are tricky to verify. Say you drive your car cross-country, creating carbon emissions, and then pay to have a few trees planted somewhere, which will remove carbon from the air. But how do you know that those trees wouldn't have been planted anyway? And how do you know that the trees will actually stick around for as long as the carbon you've emitted lasts in the atmosphere—hundreds of years? Monitoring can be done, but it's difficult. (Here's a report that ranks private offset providers, and delves into why some offsets are shadier than others.)
One big criticism of the Waxman-Markey climate bill is that it allows polluters to buy, all told, some two billion tons worth of offsets instead of reducing their emissions the old-fashioned way. Joe Romm has been interviewing a number of experts about this, and he now thinks the offsets in Waxman-Markey are nothing to fear—in part because he figures that the main task of curbing emissions by improving efficiency and swapping out fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources will actually prove cheaper than buying offsets. Read his whole post. But on the original question, I'd say the practical aspect of offsets are much more worrisome than the moral aspects.
--Bradford Plumer
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COMMENTS (1)
I agree whole-heartedly with your last paragraph. This whole thing is a fraud.
1. Cap-and-trade was originated in California as an alternative to command regulation and to substitute for regulation requiring that environmental efficiency add-ons be included in significant upgrades or expansion of power plants. The latter was taken off the table by the Bush Administration.
But how in the world do you police 'cap and trade' on a national or global scale. Who do you train to follow the trades and detect fraud. Certainly not the entry-level engineering grad who goes out to measure air and water discharges from plants, factories, airports and ships!
2. This 'move ... view full comment
I agree whole-heartedly with your last paragraph. This whole thing is a fraud.
1. Cap-and-trade was originated in California as an alternative to command regulation and to substitute for regulation requiring that environmental efficiency add-ons be included in significant upgrades or expansion of power plants. The latter was taken off the table by the Bush Administration.
But how in the world do you police 'cap and trade' on a national or global scale. Who do you train to follow the trades and detect fraud. Certainly not the entry-level engineering grad who goes out to measure air and water discharges from plants, factories, airports and ships!
2. This 'movement' to tag pollution as a 'moral' issue or 'sin' is offensive. More importantly, it distracts from a needed emphasis on real solutions. First of all, pollution is a product of industrialization and 20th century human activity. I don't feel 'guilty' about it but I think it must be addressed as a major social issue. Offsetting driving an SUV or flying by plane through buying trees does not do this. Nor should it absolve those who consider the act of pollution through a moral prism. Consider the case of Al Gore buying off-setts to compensate for the ridiculous inefficiency of his mega-mansion. What the hell? Pollute all you want; just buy the trees! He's still polluting so what does that mean?
Even on a larger scale, ACME power plant buys hundreds of thousands of trees but there is no fool-proof way to be sure this will reduce carbon in equal amounts..
3. Pollution is a by-product of industrialization, as Mr. Plumer says. It should be solved primarily through technology and bio-science. Sure, resolve and contain inefficiencies where it will make a difference. Power plants don't need to cap-and-trade. They need to retro-fit. But steering human activity with less carbon-producing techniques will not solve the problem either.
4. All sorts of entrepreneurs are experimenting with pollution-eating microbes, grass-based fuel and trees engineered to absorb even higher levels of carbon dioxide as most do now. No other country in the world has developed technologies, for better or worse - from the atomic bomb to the 'green revolution' - that have changed fundamental assumptions of human life as the US. if humans drastically altered the environment in a short 200 years, we have an obligation to drive science and technology to clear it up on a massive, authentically effective and sustainable level.
This inward focus of environmentalist on individual actions and 'iff' systems like cap-and-trade is a through-back to the Luddites, a suspicion of technology, a disbelief it can solve the problem it created.
NOTE CHINA is now building the high efficient coal power plants that our politicians talk about but whose promise is on hold for lack of support. Not only will this initiative help tame China's run-away scale of pollution. But, while we are cap-and-trading, China is developing and commercializing clean coal technology for export.