The slippery politics of carbon emissions
More than 15,000 journalists, lobbyists, reporters and technicians from 180 countries descended on the Indonesian Island of Bali in December, and in a week-long orgy of first-class flights, air-conditioning and limousine travel emitted about as much carbon dioxide as a country like Malawi produces in a year.
What were they there to do? It was a United Nations conference to discuss ways of lowering the world's carbon emissions. The organisation was rightly pilloried for this environmental own goal.
Plant a tree, offset a guilty conscience
But
wait a minute, says the UN. The host nation planted 79 million trees
and the UN spent £50,000 on offset credits for the carbon emissions of
its delegation.
So that's alright then.
Actually, no it's not. Not only is such a conference setting a dismal example to the rest of the world, it ignores all the low-carbon possibilities that teleconferencing and internet networking have to offer for global cooperation deals. Most of the political grunt work, getting countries to sign up to carbon-cutting deals, is in any case performed by officials before the bigwigs fly in.
However, the most telling point against the conference is the idea that you somehow offset its carbon footprint by some other action, such as tree planting. Clearly, if tree planting schemes are available and effective (though there is plenty of evidence that they are often not) then they should be undertaken urgently anyway.
Offset your personal carbon emissions now
Don't wait...
If,
as scientists say, the world is facing climatic disaster through global
warming, we really don't have the luxury of holding back carbon capture
schemes to "offset" overly-grand events like the Bali summit.
This event, and Al Gore's jetting around the world to publicise his film An Inconvenient Truth, illustrate just how slippery climate change politics has become.
This is a pity because the theoretical credentials of carbon offsetting and its sister schemes for carbon trading are impeccable. They attempt not only to price the cost to society of carbon emission, but to send the bill to those who cause the damage.
Previous environmental success stories have relied more on legislative bludgeon than on harnessing economics.
The 1956 Clean Air Act which ended London's smogs, the 1980s legislation which cleaned up European and North American power stations to cut acid rain, and the international treaties of the 1980s and 1990s which gradually eliminated those aerosol gases which damaged the ozone layer, were all hard-fought successes, most based on international political deals enshrined in law.
Greater ambitions
Europe's
emission trading scheme (ETS) set up in 2005 is more ambitious. It
covers the emissions of large users like power plants, cement factories
and mining firms, and capped their entitlement to carbon credits at
around 4% below that required by their activities.
They would be fined €40 per tonne of CO2 by which they exceeded their limit, unless they bought in credits from elsewhere.
The idea was that this would be a spur to invest in energy efficiency as well as providing a source of demand in the market for carbon credits. In the event, the cap was set too loose because some governments, particularly in eastern Europe, handed out too many free credits to industry. Many of those who had bought credits early saw their value plummet.
Wider scope for carbon trading
Phase
two of the EU's ETS set to start this year include widening the scope
of industries involved, possibly including airlines from 2010. The caps
will be allocated by the EU to avoid too great a generosity by national
governments.
However, the danger in all these schemes is that we lose the context in which they should operate. The Carbon Trust, a private sector body dedicated to aiding our transition to a low-carbon economy, advocates first calculating and minimising your own carbon emissions, then taking the message to those with whom you have economic relationships. Only when those steps have been taken should carbon-offsetting be considered.
Harry Morrison, a senior strategy manager at the trust, said: "The philosophy of first looking to reduce your own emissions is important."
Calculate your personal carbon footprint
Different classes of offset scheme
Most
of the attention for carbon offsetting has been given to tree planting
schemes, many in the voluntary offset sector. Morrison says these
schemes are important for the enthusiasm and ideas generated, even if
some of the schemes under-deliver the promised offset.
However, better audited and more rigorous offset schemes are available under Certified Emission Reduction, a process set up under the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and verified by the UN. These include energy efficiency measures, green energy, avoiding the leakage of damaging gases as well as some changes in land use.
Most will be funded by high-carbon western countries but the emission reduction will take place in less-developed nations. Those schemes can only be certified if they would not otherwise have taken place. Once they are, the resulting emission reduction credits can be traded.
Every breath is a carbon emission
Overall,
the difficulties in pricing and dealing with the carbon economy stem
from the fact that emissions are entwined with life itself. While
international bodies are working hard to make this new market place
work, a rather older and cruder one is quietly helping.
It is perhaps to our great fortune that realisation of climate change has coincided with unprecedented supply tightness in energy markets. Soaring crude oil, natural gas and coal prices might well do more to ratchet up green priorities and energy efficiency than anything that has been achieved so far by Kyoto or its successor schemes.
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