Flying green

By
Emma Carscadden

Flying green
Image by Flickr / emrank

Do carbon offsets make a difference or just assuage our guilt?

"Congratulations, Bruce Carscadden! Your flight is carbon neutral!"

Yay! Now that’s an attention-grabbing email!

Yes, carbon credit provider zerofootprint really wants us to feel good about purchasing offsets for our flight. The email really looks like this!

There’s a lot more to creating a green office than just focusing on the building and all the paper. Travel is a big part of running a successful business, and it can be a huge polluter. Since our practice focuses on recreation and community projects, and our projects are dotted all around the province, lots of travel is necessary.

Lightening our travel footprint

We have ways of reducing our need to travel for projects, like using conference software like GoToMeeting. And sometimes we drive, which is a little lighter on those emissions, but only a little. Some weeks, though, when Bruce needs to be in Penticton on Monday, Smithers on Thursday and Nanaimo on Friday (yes, it happens), flying really is the only option.

Guest blogger series: Crawling Toward Sustainability

This is the 14th in a series of guest blog posts in which Emma will track the progress of her office in becoming more sustainable. Next up, office composting!

Many of our projects now aim for LEED certification, including our current work at the Penticton Aquatic Centre, but the sustainability of a project extends beyond the LEED checklist. When we are flying multiple team members to Penticton or other areas on a regular basis, it is a bit of a blemish on the environmental record of the project and the firm.

That’s where this flashy orange email comes in. Through Air Canada and zerofootprint, we’re purchasing carbon credits for our work flights and encouraging our team members to do the same. The credits don’t reduce the initial impact of flying, but they do “offset” it, in this case funding a large reforestation project in Maple Ridge.

It’s passive sustainability, but the practice does have a “better than nothing” quality—and does a lot to assuage our flying emissions-related guilt. But what of the projects our dollars are funding? After all, that’s the sustainable part of this.

Not all carbon offset programs are created equal

Alas, it seems that not all carbon offset programs are created equal, and reforestation programs like zerofootprint’s do not rate highly among other projects. The David Suzuki Foundation finds these reforestation projects problematic for a variety of reasons and suggests choosing offset companies that fund renewable energy projects, for example. The article quickly made me rethink using zerofootprint, but I can’t say I like the suggestion of entirely avoiding companies that focus on tree-planting projects.

Obviously no one likes being told that their good deed for the day isn’t so good. “YAY, TREES” turned into “Oh, damn. There’s that guilt again” pretty quickly while reading the Suzuki article. Way to harsh my buzz, Dave.

Is planting trees 'greenwashing'?

I understand where the Suzuki Foundation is coming from. We can’t work towards a sustainable future without changing attitudes and perceptions, including altering our view of what is really “sustainable.”

As the notion of sustainability has increased in popularity and the science behind it has improved, greenwashing is a major concern, and things once thought to be green or natural may turn out not to be. If reforestation is as counterproductive as the Suzuki Foundation suggests, then it is important for carbon credit companies to move away from the practice and for customers to motivate that move with their dollars.

But planting trees is also classic, tangible environmentalism that shouldn’t be discounted or discontinued entirely. We need trees, and knowing that our money is going to reforesting Maple Ridge feels good. While this “feel good” attitude is probably one that needs changing based on the research, it is also an important part of making programs like carbon offsets marketable and viable.

So while I’ll look into companies with more diverse projects to purchase offsets from, we’ll also continue to purchase zerofootprint’s carbon offsets. Reforestation may not be perfect, but neither are we.

And we like trees.

Comments

Anonymous
April 19, 2010 @ 11:07

We should all make an effort to avoid using chemical that can help in polluting the environment. Think you can't make a difference so why recycle? Exactly what is one person's conservation going to do within the grand pictures? Thoughts like these are exactly what helped create the Great Pacific Garbage Patch . Garbage, plastic bottles, and numerous other things we just toss down the drain, have been carried by the North Pacific Gyre to create a massive pile of garbage within the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This pile of junk may take decades to clean out with some thinking it might be impossible. You don't think you make a difference, think again. Each and every one person who contributed to that pile made a difference, and every single person who helps recycle is making a difference. It starts with you!

Anonymous
April 15, 2010 @ 5:18

The effectiveness of carbon credits depends entirely on how the offset is generated. In the last commenter's link, the writer gave an example of not cutting down backyard trees to produce an offset. Obviously, that type of "offset" would not be helpful. But that is not how all offsets work. In BC, for example, government institutions have to become carbon neutral by purchasing offsets from a Crown corportion - Pacific Carbon Trust. Pacific Carbon Trust obtains offsets by "purchasing" them from companies that engage in some type of capital expenditure that would reduce the company's energy demand. For example, installing a waste heat electiricy generator to replace a deisel generator. This project would then be audited to calculate the resulting greenhouse gas emission reduction, which is then sold as an offset. There is no guarantee that the capital expenditure would not proceed without the offset purchase from Pacific Carbon Trust, but the purchase certainly makes it more likely that the expenditure would proceed. This creates an additional incentive for companies to proceed with projects that will reduce their energy demand - because they will get paid for it. Now, you could incentivize this behavoir other ways, such as increasing the price of emitting carbon via the carbon tax. But purchasing these types of offsets do have some impact. The important thing is that there are strict rules for how offsets are calculated and verified. Pacific Carbon Trust has such rules because it is a Crown corporation created by statute to perform a particular function. There is no guarantee, however, that an offset purchased from a private company comes from a credible source - that is, an actual, verifiable reduction in carbon emissions. IMHO, there should be government regulations that govern this sector in a uniform manner, including a requirement for independent third party verification of all offsets offered for sale.

Anonymous
April 15, 2010 @ 2:37

Carbon Credits are kind of like if they had Adultery Credits and both make about as much sense. In both, the act is committed, but you just get a free pass to do it again.

It is funny if nothing else.

http://feumet.blogspot.com/2007/03/carbon-credits-and-adultery-everything.html