FTC Offput by Offsets

theodp writes "US corporations and shoppers spent more than $54M last year on credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects, prompting the FTC to question whether carbon-offset money is well spent. 'There's a heightened potential for deception,' said FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras of the green-sounding offers that seem to be confronting consumers at every turn."

Comments

disgusting

[jgarra23]

I remember in high school reading about in the middle ages when people would buy offsets for their sins so they could get out of hell or something... not far off it sounds

Re:disgusting

[ceejayoz]

Carbon offsets, unlike indulgences, have at least the potential to not be a scam.

Re:disgusting

[timeOday]

I like tree planting, wind farms, and solar plants - and therefore carbon offsets. I don't see the sin in emitting carbon if you are sequestering just as much somewhere else. HOWEVER, we definitely need legal definitions, standards, and truth-in-advertising enforcement for this type of thing. Companies are sure to go for the cheapest available carbon offsets, so government needs to ensure that they're legit.

Re:disgusting

[Doppler00]

Easy. After 20 years, cut the tree down, burn it, and measure the CO2 emissions it produces.

Seriously though, what's the point of planting a tree? Are we saying that somehow by putting a tree sapling in the ground is going to be somehow more efficient than the native plants that would grow on that some spot of land and consume the same water etc...

Re:disgusting

[FooAtWFU]

What's truly interesting is the parallel you've just drawn between Religion and the environmentalist movement. I recall reading a short Michael Crichton speech on how the environmental movement is religious in nature (some Slashdotters will no doubt be familiar with this one) and while I didn't think he was entirely on the mark, there were some interesting points - in particular, how Environmentalism is often a moral imperative than a practical one. To demonstrate this, propose to your favorite strong environmentalist that a perfectly clean source of infinite energy was readily, cheaply available - would this be a good thing for the world, or a bad one? Some contend that this is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen (or otherwise Not Good). This is the religious/moral imperative angle.

I appreciate, to a certain extent, some of those best parts of the personal-level environmental-religious aesthetic - some sort of humility / thrift / not-wastefulness / self-denial of any individual's actions, but I do not approach them from the same environmental angle, make the same assumptions about the state of said environment, or attempt to push this agenda with it. And if these values are really important, people ought not tie them to a crisis (imagined or real) in the state of the environment, which I believe will some day (though not in any of our lifetimes) will be made utterly insignificant by technology.

And, for a less topical aside, as for your reference to indulgences, it could be said that to give of your money, to give of your labors, is to give of yourself, and while the Catholic church has never generally held that one achieves salvation through one's own actions but rather by the grace of God, giving is nevertheless a good and desirable thing. One can and should condemn the charlatans who preyed on the ignorant in this regard, corruption in their sales from the clergy, wastefulness of funds, and other degenerations of the practice. However, one should be prepared to acknowledge that while the idea that one can obtain some measure of God's grace from giving is certainly not universally accepted or necessarily true, is at least reasonable and plausible. (I leave aside for this post the Protestant-related objections of the authority of the Church to authorize them.) The common knee-jerk reaction that the matter of indulgences is one altogether deplorable, utterly unholy, or otherwise intrinsically wrong is naught but simple narrow-minded religious and ideological intolerance: never a healthy foundation for an agenda or ideological exercise.

Re:disgusting

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

a perfectly clean source of infinite energy was readily, cheaply available - would this be a good thing for the world, or a bad one? Some contend that this is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen Just who contends that? Seriously.
Sounds like a strawman argument to me.

Re:disgusting

[zippthorne]

I'm no environmentalist, but even I would be opposed to a cheap, perfectly clean source of infinite energy. Unless it came with a cheap, perfectly clean, readily available infinite heat-sink.

Re:disgusting

[radimvice]

And if these values are really important, people ought not tie them to a crisis (imagined or real) in the state of the environment, which I believe will some day (though not in any of our lifetimes) will be made utterly insignificant by technology.

You're right, the environmentalists' unquestioning belief in the future crisis of humanity is indeed very much like the religious movement. I'm glad the futurists can set us straight on the logical path, toward our inevitable technological salvation.

Re:disgusting

[catprog]

"Fossil fuels cause global warming" may be true. It's definitely *also* a rationalization for a separate, independent goal. reduction of consumption of a limited resource?

Re:disgusting

[edunbar93]

Not just the cheapest possible carbon offsets, but very likely the least likely to actually *do* anything. There's a difference between Ford commissioning El Verde Grande LLC to plant trees in the Nevada desert (questions like "Are the trees even being planted" and "did the seedlings survive long enough to offset any carbon" come to *my* mind immediately) and Wayerhauser actually hiring actual workers to actually plant trees that they actually expect to actually grow to maturity.

While I know that some companies out there (say, Xcel Energy are indeed willing to offset their own emissions by replacing them with green technology (so long as the public is willing), the benefits of say Pearl Jam's CD production offsets, are a wee bit more vague.

Personally, I would prefer to *invest* money (with the expectation of profits and return on investment and all that corporate greed stuff) in a company that directly helps the environment than to "buy carbon offsets". At the very least, I get a nice profit-and-loss sheet and a decent understanding of what they did with my money (even at the risk of, well, you know).

Re:disgusting

[El Yanqui]

Not just the cheapest possible carbon offsets, but very likely the least likely to actually *do* anything.

I've decided to offset all of my carbon by hanging little evergreen air fresheners in people's cars.
As has been mentioned before, it's far too close to indulgences for my liking. How about doing more to reduce and stop your pollution rather than this red herring. The idea of being carbon-neutral might be good in that it encourages people to do plant trees etc., but it seems many are viewing it as the end step.

Slow moving government...

[palegray.net]

From the article:

The FTC has not updated its environmental advertising guidelines, known as the Green Guides, since 1998. Back then, the agency did not create definitions for phrases that are common now--like renewable energy, carbon offsets and sustainability. This is a good example of the sluggish response of big government. Perhaps a bit of that carbon offset money should be spent on updating some federal publications and collecting feedback from citizens.

Re:FTC

[palegray.net]

I'm going to burn some karma here while replying to a troll. So sue me. I direct the following at the parent poster:

Fuck you and the cunt of a mother you were expelled from, you stinking little fucktard racist prick.

Thank you, I feel much better now.

Your Government At Work

[hyades1]

So these wankers at the FTC have been sitting around with their thumbs up their butts for 10 years instead of offering some legally-defensible "green" definitions that could have been whipped off in a few days. Now they're concerned that companies are seeking to take advantage of peoples' concern for the environment because they've been throwing money toward wind and solar energy, and the like.

Go back to sleep, you useless pack of oxygen wasters. We'll work it out for ourselves. I guess they're really concerned that a penny spent on enviro-fraud is a penny not spent on fossil-fraud.

Re:Your Government At Work

[bperkins]

I don't think that's particularly fair. The FTC doesn't have the time of the resources to chase every marketing term out there, and these definitions are horribly muddy. For example, it took many years before the government (the FDA if memory serves) could agree on a definition of organic. This wasn't due to lack of need or desire or even trying, it was because the industry just couldn't agree on it.

"Green" marketing terms are even worse. Some would claim that nuclear power is green, while others would not. Some think paper bags are green, while others think plastic is green. Is corn-based ethanol green if the fertilizer used to grow it ends up killing off most of the Gulf of Mexico? I doubt you could nail down any of these definitions in a few months, let alone a few days.

Finally, carbon offsets are relatively new, and problematic from a consumer perspective. It's difficult to verify that way you're paying for is being done, and almost entirely impossible to verify that someone isn't selling offset multiple times. Even if you could, you can never be quite sure that someone isn't selling you a false offset. This industry is totally ripe for fraud, and it seems reasonable for the FTC to look into it.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

[Mesa MIke]

Say, YOU don't have to feel guilty about emitting all those nasty green house gases. All you gotta do is cough up the money (to me, of course) to pay for Carbon Indulgences... Oh, and don't ask me whether I can show that what I use the money for actually offsets your sinful carbon dioxide effluence. Just trust me....

Re:All Hogwash!

[CajunArson]

Considering the carbon emissions of atomic power are 0 that's a pretty good "offset", although I think the entire thing is a scam to separate over-indulged yuppies with guilty consciences from their money.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

[Quila]

the scam is to allow big polluters a back door by buying credits and not having to clean up the mess they are putting into the athmosphere

That's the best explanation I've seen of how Al Gore is both a big polluter and a scam artist.

Re:All Hogwash!

[jamstar7]

The problem is that building and fueling an atomic power station takes a considerable amount of energy. The argument seems to hinge on how much fuel can be created by breeder reactors and how much must be mined and refined.

Building anything takes power and fuel. The only way to not use up fuel and energy is to sit on a rock someplace until you starve to death.

The whole point of cap-and-trade

[bakuun]

the scam is to allow big polluters a back door by buying credits and not having to clean up the mess they are putting into the athmosphere.

That's one of the major points of cap-and-trade systems. By allowing a large corporation (A) to buy carbon credits from another corporation (B) instead of cleaning up / lowering their emissions, the costs are minimized. Notice that just because A doesn't have to clean up their emissions, B instead will have to. Regardless of where on the buy-credits-or-cleanup scale A chooses to sit, somebody will have to clean up for those emissions.

By having such a system, the efforts for cleaning up would automatically be done in the areas where it is most cost-effective. Let's say that company A can reduce their carbon emissions at a cost of 10 $ / ton (I'm just making up the figures, have no idea how realistic they are). Company B can reduce their carbon emissions at a cost of $5 / ton. Now, either company A could choose to clean up their act, or they could buy carbon credits for whatever amount of carbon emissions they have from company B (giving company A a profit of perhaps $1 / ton). It is clear enough that in the second case, total expenses would be lowered (and the "cleaning" company even gets a profit!), while the total reduction in carbon emissions stays the same.

It is very important to note that this part, the "trading" part, is only one half. The second part, just as important, is the "cap" part. It would be possible to just flood the market with these credits, thereby making the system useless. Instead, the idea is to initially give quite generous credit rations (but still low enough so that companies would have to lower their emissions) and then as time goes by, successively lower the number of available credits on the market. It is this process which will cause the emissions to go down. The market half is just designed to make sure that those emissions reductions occur in the areas where it is cheapest to do them.

'There's a heightened potential for deception,'

[bm_luethke]

Well, no shit Sherlock.

Lets see, we allow people to pay lots of money in order to spew extra amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Yea, we should all be shocked this one didn't work out well in the end. If one truly believes that this is wrong then doing so is, well, wrong. Most realize this though many want to rationalize why they can continue to do so.

How many would support increasing the costs of a Hummer by enough to "offset" the carbon impact and then declare this just as "green" as an alternative fuel only small lightweight car? How many would talk about how great it is purchase a hummer if they included in the cost enough carbon offset to make the car a carbon sink (and given their cost it wouldn't be much a percentage increase)? My guess is VERY VERY few. However, that is *exactly* what is going on here - except that the rich are able to do so for their freaking entire lifestyle. The carbon offsets can't be attributed 100% to the hummer and are generally spun as going towards other things, however for those living so called "carbon neutral" lifestyles and still driving such things that is *exactly* what they are doing.

If one ever wants to know why the general public doesn't care much at all, all we have to do is look here. The vast majority of the highly public outspoken people are making *no* sacrifice while demanding it of us. They are simply trying to purchase their way by having us "less fortunate" people make up their slack. Especially true when certain Nobel Prize winners purchase them from their selves (not naming names here - after all that would be unfair). More often than not offsets are simply used for the True Believers to rationalize away their living gods.

No, no abuse of the system going on here. It is perfectly legitimate for those with more money to purchase a lower carbon impact of those without money so they can continue to do what they have always done. Nope, no problem there.

If that was the cost, what was the benefit?

[patio11]

I don't live in Glouster, Ohio so I'll just take your claim that the water doesn't taste good anymore at face value. (Although it appears the fish don't mind: http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Home/FishingSubhomePage/LakeMapLandingPage/BurrOakLakeFishingMap/tabid/19488/Default.aspx) So that was the cost -- what was the benefit?

How many folks in the area are able to feed their families because of the coal mines? How many folks in the area did not freeze to death this December because their houses had access to cheap energy? How many hospitals in the area did not see a sudden loss of all folks on ventilators because they had uninterrupted access to electricity regardless of the weather conditions?

Human action doesn't *just* damage the environment -- it also enriches our lives. For example, there never would have been Burr Oak Lake in the first place without the *enormously* consequential decision to dam the river.

Sorry, its wrong.

[Shivetya]

Its a license to pollute. It is the ultimate expression of wealth. You are buying permission to pollute.

All I saw at the recent get together for global warming supporters in Asia were people willing to save the environment because they are willing to make ME sacrifice. They, no, they have the money to buy themselves the right to destroy my environment and the political power to protect that right of theirs while taking mine away.

Sorry, but the primary reason I destest Al Gore is his excessive resource use which he somehow thinks he absolves by buying trees. If he were truly serious about OUR environment he would cut back what he uses, not buy the right to abuse.

There is nothing more arrogant than carbon credits : paying for excessive resource use and the right to pollute.

Re:Sorry, its wrong.

[sethawoolley]

I agree, but I'd go a bit further.

I think the worse sin is the fact that they are measuring amount of carbon. That's simply not complete. They should be measuring the difficulty of replacing the carbon it's supposed to offset and then investing directly in some technology that's supposed to do that.

Buying wind power that's unusable to power an airplane means that. Donating to (not just investing in a company) that will actually promise to develop and give away a technology that enables airplanes to fly for the same miles you flew. Now that would be equal.

Carbon credit buyers are merely trying to use the "amount of carbon" as a proxy for guilt. I'm sorry, but that's not an accurate proxy. Try again.

Seth

Re:Sorry, its wrong.

[FredFredrickson]

Since everybody on this topic seems anti-carbon credit, I will provide my 2 cents (on the assumption that at least 1 organization does carbon credits correctly).

I believe carbon credits to be a good thing. First, it shows a sense of responsibility. I don't buy carbon credits to show them off, I buy carbon credits out of a desire to neutralize my carbon.

If I buy enough credits to cover the carbon I emit this year, then I've done more to protect the environtment than you. Period. It's not a license to pollute, think about it- It's a license to clean up after yourself.

Imagine if I decided to throw all my trash on the ground, but I paid someone to pick up after me. It would be a weird habbit, and it wouldn't say much good about me, but at the same time, it would certainly be better than not getting somebody to pick it up- so it shows a sense of responsibility. In the end, my habbits affect nobody at all. My habbits have zero impact on anybody. And that's better than just not doing anything at all.

But another angle people don't look at is this: I just plainly don't make enough money to make major changes in my life. I've switched my lightbulbs and switched to energy efficient heat. In the end, I could afford that because it made my bills go down, so it paid for itself.

But at the job I have, I just can't afford to much else. I HAVE to get to work, and there's no public transportation where I live. I can't afford a more energy efficient car (although I dream about some day getting one). I can't afford solar panels (although I drool at the idea of ridding myself of an electric bill). I can't afford to make the major changes in my life that would really impact my footprint on this earth.

Maybe some day I'll be able to afford it. But now I cannot.

The saying is: Reduce what you can, Offset what you can't. It's not a license to pollute- it's my ability to do something on my budget, instead of nothing at all- Until I can afford to make a difference myself. Part of this is dependent on greener energy and devices becomming available and affordable.

Ya think?

[argStyopa]

1) The 'carbon trading system' is itself non-progressive, in the sense that it promotes NOTHING in the sense of preventing the emission of carbon. All people are doing is justifying their carbon emissions by pointing at some other carbon sequestration going on somewhere else. Sure, there is a TINY incentive to perform carbon sequestration but since there is so much capacity elsewhere and the revenue generated by incremental change is infinitesimal, that's really no incentive at all.

2) "There's a heightened potential for deception" - ya think? A globe-spanning system of compelling people into spending their money, which is neither monitored, audited, nor regulated by any objective authority. One might think that there would be an incentive for the members which feed off that system...be they scientists getting grants to study it, former government officials who are paid ridiculous fees to talk about it (& they get world recognition and adulation, itself a useful currency), or the mandarin who pass these off as genuine transactions ... might have an incentive to overvalue what they are selling? I'd be curious to see how many of the alleged owners of carbon credits (which should be anyone that owns forestland or farmland, right?) ACTUALLY have seen a dime of the guilt-money wrung from the first world on their behalf. It's White Guilt that you can absolve with CASH! W00t! Perfect for your (white) wealthy urbanite who feels that somehow they don't deserve the abundance around them. Now they can sleep with the peace of moral certitude, for only $X.

I stand on a beach. The tide has rolled out. I say "look at all this cool free land that nobody owns!" and my friends and I promptly build houses on it. When the tide inevitably rolls back in, I cry to the government that they must save us, and I make a tendentious movie purporting to prove that the tide has only now rolled in since humans built on the beach, that it MUST be humans' fault.
Different time scales, but otherwise just as stupid.

Re:Only if it doesn't work.

[mwlewis]

What if the trees do offset his carbon usage? What if they more than offset his carbon usage?

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that these offsets do what they claim. If he really believes in the apocalypse that he preaches about, instead of offsetting his heated pool, he could be offsetting the output of actions by other people, many of whom can't afford the luxury of buying offsets.

Do as I say, not as I do is not a way to convince others of your sincerity. And if he doesn't believe that it matters, then why should we?