Carbon Offsets: Privileged Pollution?
b"A carbon offset is a credit \\u2013 a way to offset a unit of pollution created in one place by, say, planting a tree, or otherwise sequestering carbon, somewhere else. But in the race to bring carbon emissions to zero, are offsets a legitimate tool, or a delusion that allows heavy emitters a way out of taking real action?\\n\\n\\n\\u201cI just need to recruit everybody to make sure the forests remain forests and the farmlands have as many trees as possible,\\u201d says Pauline Kalunda, Executive Director of Ecotrust Uganda,\\na non-governmental conservation organization in Uganda. She uses money from carbon offsets purchased in wealthy countries to help build environmental resilience at the community level. Buying offsets can help fund carbon-reduction projects in developing economies with limited funding \\u2013 but they don\\u2019t help reduce dirty air back home.\\n\\n\\n\\u201cWe ultimately need to get to a point where it is really, really expensive to pollute so that people pollute a lot less,\\u201d maintains Kahlil Baker, Executive Director of Taking Root, a Canada-based group which also works with the offset market to promote economic development among smallholder farmers in Nicaragua. Voluntary offsets are great for eco-conscious consumers who want to ease their climate guilt. Do they run the risk of letting individuals think they\\u2019re off the hook for their carbon sins?\\n\\n\\n\\u201cI\\u2019m a lot less worried about offsets from individuals than I am about Chevron offsetting,\\u201d says Zoe Cina-Sklar, a climate justice campaigner with the advocacy group Amazon Watch. She worries about corporations and other large polluters using offsets to avoid accountability under state climate policies. \\n\\n\\nBarbara Haya, a research fellow at UC Berkeley\\u2019s Center for Environmental Public Policy, who studies California\\u2019s offsets program, echoes this worry. \\u201cWe\\u2019re allowing businesses in California like Chevron and Phillips and other large emitters to continue to emit,\\u201d she claims, \\u201cbecause they're buying these credits that many of which don't actually represent real emissions reductions.\\u201d \\n\\n\\nBut Rajinder Sahota, who leads the Cap and Trade program for the California Air Resources Board, disagrees with the takeaways of Haya\\u2019s research. \\u201cThe offsets don't play a specific line item in reducing emissions towards our target,\\u201d she counters, \\u201cthey are a compliance currency under the cap and trade program.\\u201d\\n\\n\\nUltimately, carbon offsets work best, as Derik Broekhoff from the Stockholm Environmental Institute puts it, as the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. \\u201cThe advice for voluntary offset has always been reduce your own emissions first,\\u201d he suggests, \\u201cand then turn to offsets as a kind of additional even charitable contribution that you can make towards both helping the climate and making the world a better place.\\u201d\\n\\n\\nGuests (in order of appearance):\\n\\nPauline Kalunda, Executive Director, Ecotrust Uganda \\n\\nKahlil Baker, Executive Director, Taking Root \\n\\nPennie Opal Plant, Co-Founder, Idle No More Bay Area\\n\\nZoe Cina-Sklar, Climate Justice Campaigner, Amazon Watch\\n\\nBarbara Haya, Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Public Policy \\n\\nRajinder Sahota, Assistant Division Chief, Industrial Strategies Division, California Air Resources Board\\nDerik Broekhoff, Senior Scientist, Stockholm Environmental Institute\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"