Ah yes, a word we’re all growing more familiar with. Offsetting has become a bit of a buzzword when it comes to sustainability, with more and more people, organisations and governments using it as a tactic for reaching net zero. Sounds great right? Well, this week I’ll be discussing the two sides of offsetting to help you make up your mind.
So, what is offsetting? Offsetting, specifically carbon offsetting, is a method of balancing out the carbon that we’ve used. For example, someone might using offsetting if they’ve taken a long haul flight, or a company might aim to offset all of their activities. This ‘neutralises’ the carbon, so effectively you’ve made up for the carbon that you used. One of the most well known methods of offsetting is planting trees, but there are also clean air technologies or emissions trading schemes. Those are the basics, but of course it’s a lot more complicated than that.
So first of all, the positives.
First of all, it gives companies and people a chance to somewhat make up for emissions, particularly where their emissions are as low as they can get. For example, where a small company has reduced their footprint already, or a company uses heavy machinery which is difficult or impossible to reduce the carbon for, offsetting may give them the opportunity to make a difference.
Secondly, initiatives like planting trees, or working on carbon capture technology, are excellent when done right. Although there are many negatives (as I’ll discuss in a minute), the concept of offsetting may help a company or person to become more aware of their carbon footprint and what this represents. For example, we’re always given a football field as a measurement, but if you know exactly how many trees are planted every time you drive your car, it may make you change behaviours, alter resource use and generally up your awareness.
So what are the negatives?
One of the big negatives is specific to planting trees. When tree planting schemes are done, they tend to plant the same tree again and again. This reduces the biodiversity of the area, which can seriously affect the wildlife that live there. Another problem with trees as a carbon offsetting technique is that there are other types of habitat that are excellent for carbon sequestration, such as peat bogs, yet these are never mentioned. Trees also take time to start sequestering carbon – a newly planted tree is nowhere near as valuable as a tree that has been around for years. Don’t get me wrong, trees are great and they are good at sequestering carbon, but teaching people that trees are the only answer is detrimental to other important habitats.
Another lesser known negative of offsetting is its colonial links. Most offsetting strategies need a lot of land, which leads to land grabbing, with communities (often indigenous) being separated from their homes. Offsetting is yet another case of climate colonialism, which is terrible, especially when you think about the imbalance of carbon use between the countries that pollute, and the countries where offsetting strategies occur.
Another massive negative for me, and my main problem with offsetting, is the attitude. The idea that we can live how we want to and simply balance it all out afterwards, is extremely damaging. We can see this in the approach to meeting net zero – a lot of planning involves carbon capture technology which will magically take the carbon out of the air. Yes, some of the damage we have done to the planet will have to use technologies like this, and they’re innovative, but at it’s core the only way that we can do better is to reduce in the first place, and the idea of offsetting goes against this.
So there are the two sides. What do I think? Well, I think it’s a nice idea. My overall opinion is that it’s better to reduce what you use in the first place, because although offsetting is a good idea, we can never truly replace the carbon that we take out of the ground. The highly used method of offsetting at the moment, which is planting trees, also has it’s own problems that bother me, mostly the damage that it can do to biodiversity. However, I think that if (for some unknown reason), I absolutely had to fly somewhere, I would use an offsetting scheme, because this is better than flying and doing nothing. I would also be careful to look at the type of offsetting scheme, and consider those that factor in biodiversity and social benefits.
So, what are your opinions on offsetting?
Waste Makes Waste 