Is offsetting really a solution?
One of the premises of the Green Pledge is that if I have to fly I will offset my flights. Yet increasingly I have been asking myself whether offsetting is really a solution or whether it is more like recycling, namely we are better not flying and not using the plastic than offsetting and recycling. Is offsetting simply a way of assuaging our guilt, rather like the church selling indulgences to pay for our sins?
At its simplest, offsetting is paying someone else to reduce their emissions, rather than reduce your own. For example, investing in renewable energy or tree-planting, or investing in environmentally friendly stoves in the developing world. There are numerous carbon offsetting schemes available and for a relatively small payment you can allegedly wipe out the impact of that flight to interview a witness, attend a conference or visit a client.
The Green Pledge team plans to issue protocols in due course for best practice in relation to each of the premises of the Green Pledge. In relation to offsetting, best practice is far from clear. A tonne of carbon saved today is far more valuable in terms of preventing climate change than a tonne of carbon saved in three years' time. Almost all the carbon offset schemes take time to recoup the emissions we release today, if they recoup them at all. Being cynical, if you really want to say that you have wiped out the emissions you generated by taking that flight, you need to be able to show that the carbon offsetting would not have happened without you, for example that those trees would not have been planted, that people in India would not have bought environmentally friendly stoves or that methane capture from farming would not have occurred. Clearly that is is imposssible.
Having pondered the offsetting question at some length, I think it comes down to whether you are doing it as part of a general effort to change your behaviour or whether you are doing it to assuage guilt and to allow you to carry on living a high emission life (and I accept that doing it at all is better than nothing).
To avoid catastrophic climate change the global temperature rise must be confined to 2C above pre-industrial levels. This requires a 60% cut in global climate emissions by 2030, which means a 90% cut in emissions in the developed world. Funding carbon offset projects is not going to achieve this.
The answer, I am afraid, is not to take that flight.
This year so far (and it’s only January) I have declined speaking engagements in Madrid, Kuala Lumpur and Dublin. But I have been greatly encouraged by the fact that more conferences are being streamed, and there are more opportunities to participate remotely as a speaker. Others are changing their behaviour too. A QC emailed me today to say that they had not traveled to Dubai this month as they had planned to, but had had extensive and lengthy consultations with their client over video link. They commented “ you have to accept that there will be glitches for 5 mins each day, but then it all settles down and you find yourself asking for a cup of coffee from London when they are arranging the coffee run in Dubai”.
The heirarchy of the mantra Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is significant. Reduce first. Then Reuse. Only then Recycle. We need to remember it when we are considering flying. I would suggest Remain (participate by video), Train (look at travel alternatives), Sustain (pay to offset).
Remain, Train, Sustain. It might catch on.
