How I learned to stop worrying and love (or tolerate) carbon offsets
If you can pay $10/ton to remove CO2 from the air, or to keep it from being emitted, that’s ten times better than the option that costs $100/ton. We want our climate-fighting dollars to get the most bang for the buck.
Two years ago, I faced a difficult decision. My university voted and then publicly pledged to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero 2040, and 75% by 2025. I went to the vote wearing my windmill tie for good luck, having vociferously argued our emissions reductions should come from embracing renewable electricity and eliminating fossil fuel use, not from buying carbon offsets (paying someone else to reduce emissions on your behalf). Like many scholars and environmental advocates, I considered offsets almost worse than doing nothing.
The “no offset” argument carried the day. By 2023 we had cut emissions by almost 50%. But a couple of unanticipated road blocks put our 2025 goal temporarily out of reach. Should I reverse course? It was time to dive into the controversy around offsets.
Offsets are a lightning rod in the climate debate, but the idea is appealing because the climate doesn’t respond to where CO2 comes from, only how much there is in the air. If you can pay $10/ton to remove CO2 from the air, or to keep it from being emitted, that’s ten times better than the option that costs $100/ton. We want our climate-fighting dollars to get the most bang for( article continues at Ecosystem Marketplace )