Carbon Offsets: The "Wait a sec!" factor

Gristmill: "Intuitively, though, it feels like there's something wrong with this picture. When you stop and think about it, the whole idea of driving a car, paying money into a green kitty to offset the CO2 from burning the gas, and then calling the car trip carbon-neutral, is ludicrous."

We've talked about this dilemma several times already and gradually the light seems to be going on. If all we ever do is pay dollars to assuage guilt over polluting, but keep on polluting, we're gonna lose the battle against global warming. You can't pay Peter to rob Paul.

Carbon offsetting has a transitional role to play. As I've emphasized before, it's a good way to raise visibility and create a consciousness about human actions. If you pay the "carbon tax" often enough, you'll soon figure out that it might be better just not to pollute at all. And there are still too many times when you just have to drive somewhere.

Ultimately the issue becomes travel, of course. If the Dave Matthews Band could ride bikes to its arenas, and if DMB fans could walk, hike or ride to concerts, there wouldn't be a problem. But how do you get a great band together with its fans and NOT pollute? Until we crack that nut, offsetting isn't ludicrous. Lamentable, yes. But the only feasible alternative.

In the meantime, think about this: Relocalization. Before cheap oil and vastly subsidized transportation, music fans and musicians got together locally. I can dimly recall from my wayward youth going to concerts that did not feature the Beatles or Stones or any big name national band, and having just as much fun (maybe more), spewing comparatively minimal carbon into the atmosphere.

-- Paul Andrews, GreenforGood

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The World Melts, Humans Freeze Up

Huffington Post's Toby Barlow: "While the vast majority of existing intelligence points to the inevitability of global warming, with a list of catastrophic predictions that would seem almost biblical if they weren't based in hard science, there's still no political will to do anything about it. Nothing. Nobody is lifting a finger. I think that's because of three things: politics, language, and storytelling."

Treehugger's T-shirt contest

Help the cause, help your own cause: T-shirt design contest, the "T" stands for "Treehugger." We'll try to carry 'em when they come out on GreenforGood!

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Treehugger: Can You Bake a Biodiesel Pie?

Treehugger: In his two-car garage, Kevin Newman is pouring used French fry oil from local restaurants into a pair of General Electric household water heaters - his version of the giant petroleum cracking towers found at an oil company refinery. He deftly moves hoses around, scrubs the impurities from the oil, performs chemical tests, and, voilà, a week later, he is filling-up his pickup truck with biodiesel. He figures his home refinery saves him and his business, which has six trucks, about $1.75 a gallon. "If you can bake a cake, you can make biodiesel," says Mr. Newman.

I met a fellow from Costa Rica last week driving a biodiesel pickup. He said it costs him around 75 cents a gallon to make fuel. When I gave a low whistle he pointed out that in Venezuela, regular gas costs 15 cents a gallon!

-- Paul Andrews, GreenforGood

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