Discussion Board

Has anybody had any experience with them? I stumbled across their site this evening while hunting for green power options for my electric utility (yeah right.) I gather you donate to them and they will purchase enough renewable energy credits to offset your carbon usage through other green producers.

Does this sound right?

I haven't heard of that particular company, per se, but this idea was referred to by Al Gore in his documentary as a way to stay carbon neutral. The idea is that, for example, they will pay people in the developing world to plant trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

I am personally conflicted about the idea. On the one hand, better that than nothing. On the other hand I can see how we could use it as a reason to not change anything fundamental about our lifestyle and just pay to make the problem go away. Sort of like taking a statin to deal with cholesterol and still eating a SAD diet.

Ok, that didn't help at all, did it?

I've recently heard some scientific questions being raised about this entire concept. While I can't remember the specifics, the issues raised were about some long term climate consequences for the advanced economies planting millions of trees in what will be mostly more southern zones.
They claimed something about that process causing more problems than it solves.

Additionally I saw the following about carbonfund.org......however it is a bit dated.....


Research your organization before you put your money on the table! I'm currently "shopping" for an offsetting program and found that for 2005, carbonfund.org:

-Had $39,421 in revenue.
-Spent $12,625 to directly offset carbon emissions.
-Spent $16,242 on education programs, press releases, and developing their website.

In other words:
-32% of their revenue directly mitigates CO2 emissions
-68% of their revenue goes into developing their company and educating the public on carbon neutrality (including developing their website and issuing PR statements about their role in balancing CO2 emissions)

That means that for 2005, 32 cents of every dollar you donate was applied directly to reducing CO2 emissions. The other 68 cents went to PR and education (which means paying for their website, educating the public, issuing press releases about their company, and so on.)