Anhydrous Wit

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Friday, October 17, 2008

Credit where Credit is Due

I don't understand the buzz about carbon "credits". I think it's just something that people thought up to distract themselves from the amount of energy they waste.

Yesterday, I took some books from a friend to the used bookstore. How many credits did I earn for carrying the books with me on a routinely scheduled trip from Albuquerque, rather than shipping them via the Post Office or UPS? How many credits did I earn for taking the books to be reused, rather than recycled? I walked to the bookstore. How many credits did I earn by not driving? I picked up four soda cans during my walk. How many minutes of TV may I watch because that's the amount of energy saved by recycling rather than generating virgin aluminum?

A couple of days ago, I attended a "webinar" in City Hall. One office paid to participate then invited several of us from different organizations to watch it with them. At the end of the webinar, the moderator announced that the registered number of participants had earned so many carbon credits by not traveling so many miles to attend the session. Get real. How many of us that did attend would even considering flying across the country for a one-hour session that didn't really tell us all that much and raised more questions than it answered? If you want to be serious, tell me how much more carbon I could have saved by paying for the webinar myself and not driving to City Hall? (And how much more money would the presenters have earned?)

Back in the spring of 2007, an "environmental justice" conference held on campus wanted to plant trees as carbon "offsets", to compensate for the amount of energy they used to attend and put on the conference. As I understand it, the trees supposedly ingest the same amount of carbon dioxide expended. What I want to know is, did the people who calculated the number of trees needed also consider the amount of carbon expended to water, fertilize, harvest, and transport the trees? How about the energy we used to dig the holes and plant the trees? What about the overtime labor for planting on a Saturday morning? What size tree consumes that much carbon -- the tiny, five-gallon trees which were donated, the larger, 24" boxed trees we provided, or a towering, mature Sequoia in northern California?

I'm bordering on ridiculous to make a point. Don't just give me an inflated, imaginary number which means nothing to me. I know that plants transform carbon dioxide. Show me the calculations used. Prove to me that your argument is logically based. Above all, don't get a "holier than thou" attitude.

1 Comments:

At 8:27 AM, October 20, 2008 , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Meh... the whole carbon credit thing is a scam. It is a way for polluters to profit by not having to change their ways. It simply does not address the problem. And, as you point out, the popular solutions are dubious when you look at the ENTIRE carbon cycle required to implement them.

 

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