020 - Carbon Offsetting
Hello, hello, hello, and it's another day at the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge and welcome to the show.
The subject of today's podcast is carbon offsetting.
We'll explain what it is, how it works, why some people love it, praising it as an effective solution towards limiting climate change, while others think it is a load of rubbish, and just another example of us kicking the can further down the road.
I'm quite excited about this one and it's something that's pretty close to my heart, although you'll have to wait until the end of the podcast to find out what I really think about it.
Before we get right into it though, let me just take a minute to remind those of you without the key vocabulary and transcript in front of you that you can grab a copy of it and become a member of Leonardo English over on the website, which is Leonardoenglish.com.
Members get the transcripts and key vocabulary now also downloadable in shiny new PDF format for every podcast we've ever released, plus, of course, you'll get two new ones zooming into your inbox every week.
And in case you were not aware, the promotional early bird price of just nine euros per month is coming to an end at midnight on January the 31st, so if you want to lock in that super low promotional price, then make sure you head over and grab yourself a membership before midnight on the 31st.
Head to Leonardoenglish.com/subscribe.
Okay then, carbon offsetting.
You have probably heard of it, and you probably even have an idea about what it is.
But in today's podcast we are going to dig a little bit deeper, explain how it really works, talk through some of the pros and cons, and you can make your own mind up as to whether you think it's a good idea.
I'm going to skip over the part where we all agree that global warming is a huge existential problem and we should do whatever we can to minimise our carbon footprint. I think that's almost a given.
So carbon offsetting is one way that has been proposed for mainly Western countries that are pumping carbon into the atmosphere to offset, to counteract their actions by paying for initiatives that reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
Either initiatives that stop carbon going into the air in the first place or that remove, that take out, CO2 from the atmosphere.
The idea is that you have a 'carbon damage' balance, so that's the amount of carbon that you're responsible for putting into the air, which can be from driving a car, taking planes, heating or cooling your home, eating meat, or doing anything else that is putting carbon into the air.
And then you have a 'carbon repair' balance, which is the amount of carbon that you are responsible for taking out of the atmosphere, either through doing things that actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere, like planting trees, which absorb CO2 or through not putting it into the atmosphere in the first place, so for example, financing clean energy projects, so that the energy is generated without emitting carbon in the first place.
To go what is called 'carbon neutral', your carbon damage minus your carbon repair needs to be below zero, think of it like a bank balance. This typically happens by people paying for carbon repair in the form of carbon offsets.
So when you hear about rock stars, companies or even countries saying that they are carbon neutral, it doesn't mean that they are responsible for no emissions, but it means that their emissions or their carbon damage is offset by the carbon repair activities they are doing.
The slightly strange thing about this is that it's perfectly possible to fly all the way around the world on a private jet and burn coal all day long, but if you pay enough to offset these activities, technically you are still carbon neutral.
What's more, the cost of these carbon repair, these carbon offsetting activities, on a personal level is actually probably quite a lot less than you might think.
Offsetting a return flight from London to San Francisco, for example, would be about 20 pounds and offsetting a year's driving might be another 20 pounds, depending on the type of car that you drive of course.
Add all of these up to calculate the cost on a personal level, and it might seem like quite a small price to pay for the prize of saving the planet.
So it all sounds pretty good in theory, if we all just knew our carbon damage and made sure that it was offset by our carbon repair, is that just the solution to global warming?
Well, no, it's not quite so simple.
Despite its apparent simplicity, carbon offsetting has its fair share of critics and for some valid reasons.
George Monbiot, a famous environmental journalist from the British newspaper The Guardian, compared it to the ancient Catholic church's practice of selling indulgences, which is where you would be absolved, you'd be forgiven for your sins, and you would have reduced time in purgatory, in return for financial donations, in return for money given to the church.
He said that carbon offsets allow us to buy complacency, political apathy and self-satisfaction.
In plain English, it means that if there is an option for people to just pay the fine, to pay up, in exchange for their bad behaviour, they will just do it.
It allows people to continue to engage in all of these activities that are very carbon-heavy, and are big contributors to global warming, but not feel guilty because they are now carbon neutral as they have paid to offset their carbon.
You want to take a flight for a weekend away? Sure, you shouldn't feel bad about it because you can offset your carbon.
The criticism is that it doesn't address the root cause of global warming and in order to have any chance of reducing the carbon in the atmosphere, people's behaviour needs to change.
By promoting carbon offsets, the argument goes, there is no incentive for people's behaviour to change.
What's more, it's actually going the other way as society is saying that it's acceptable to just pay up and offset it.
People often make the comparison between carbon offsetting and things like daycare centre late fees where in order to deter, to discourage, parents from being late, from picking up their children from daycare, some daycare centres started to add fines, financial punishments, every time a parent was late.
It was intended to be a deterrent, to reduce the amount of times that parents were late to pick up their children, but actually had completely the opposite effect.
The frequency of parents being late actually increased because they felt they could just pay the fine and get on with it.
Critics of carbon offsetting also claimed that many projects will only have positive effects five, ten or twenty years down the line, in the future.
This is especially the case for things like tree planting.
Trees, obviously don't grow overnight, so even if you pay for tree planting now, it won't have any effect on your carbon footprint for many years and a tonne of carbon taken out of the sky today is worth much more than one taken out of the sky in five, ten or twenty years' time.
Now, in fact, the majority of carbon offsetting programmes have switched to more short-term wins, to quicker wins, from things like investing in clean energy to distributing more efficient cooking stoves.
So they switched to things where there is an immediate impact, and in many cases it's also a little bit more measurable.
But even with these, there's an additional problem, which is that it's often difficult to prove that the carbon offsetting schemes that have been put in place have actually had any positive impact or rather have had an impact that wouldn't have happened anyway.
For example, if there is a scheme that encourages people in a certain area to switch to an energy efficient light bulb, how can you really know whether people in that area wouldn't have switched anyway?
Yes, it's a good thing that they are using energy efficient light bulbs, but if they'd have made that switch anyway, then there's no point in paying to offset it if the behaviour would have happened in any case.
It also encourages the local government in the places where these offset initiatives are taking place not to engage in any of these kinds of activities if it knows that these activities will be done by others through carbon offsetting.
There's also the other criticism, similar to the criticism that is leveled at lots of charitable giving, which is you never know quite how efficient it is.
If you are giving $20 to offset something through a clean cooking project in Botswana, you have no idea how efficient your carbon offsetting is.
You'll never go there to check and there have been some bad operators in the carbon offsetting market that have sullied, that have damaged the reputation of the industry.
These are, of course, all valid concerns and the carbon offsetting industry has stepped up to the mark and implemented some rigorous standards and accreditations for carbon offsetting programmes.
A bit like fair trade or organic food.
This has done a lot to clamp down on bad actors and has meant that, in theory at least, carbon offsetting should be more efficient, more transparent, and that more of the money goes towards projects that actually have a positive effect instead of either just going into someone's pocket or being wasted altogether.
So what is the answer?
Is carbon offsetting a good thing or is it just another way for people to pay to not think about their polluting activities and to not change their behaviour in the slightest?
Well, it's of course not black and white and there isn't a one size fits all answer.
If you are someone that is just paying to offset their carbon and not changing your behaviour in any way, or worse, if you think that carbon offsetting allows you to behave in a more polluting way because you can just pay to offset it, then that's obviously not really a good thing at all.
You can make the argument that it's slightly better than not offsetting anything, but it doesn't address the root cause, which is the need for behaviour change.
But if you carbon offset as
part of a broader plan to reduce your carbon emissions and are also taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint through changing your behaviour and becoming more aware of the impact that you are having, then it becomes a little bit different.
In these circumstances, carbon offsetting is something that can be used as a tool for good, and I think that it certainly has its place.
What it cannot be is an excuse to continue living a carbon-heavy lifestyle and pay money to buy your way out of it.
It is not a silver bullet, a perfect solution that can solve the problem of global warming.
But as part of a broad set of measures to tackle climate change, it can be an effective tool.
And that, I think, is where I stand on the matter.
Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you next time.
---
The subject of today's podcast is carbon offsetting.
We'll explain what it is, how it works, why some people love it, praising it as an effective solution towards limiting climate change, while others think it is a load of rubbish, and just another example of us kicking the can further down the road.
I'm quite excited about this one and it's something that's pretty close to my heart, although you'll have to wait until the end of the podcast to find out what I really think about it.
Before we get right into it though, let me just take a minute to remind those of you without the key vocabulary and transcript in front of you that you can grab a copy of it and become a member of Leonardo English over on the website, which is Leonardoenglish.com.
Members get the transcripts and key vocabulary now also downloadable in shiny new PDF format for every podcast we've ever released, plus, of course, you'll get two new ones zooming into your inbox every week.
And in case you were not aware, the promotional early bird price of just nine euros per month is coming to an end at midnight on January the 31st, so if you want to lock in that super low promotional price, then make sure you head over and grab yourself a membership before midnight on the 31st.
Head to Leonardoenglish.com/subscribe.
Okay then, carbon offsetting.
You have probably heard of it, and you probably even have an idea about what it is.
But in today's podcast we are going to dig a little bit deeper, explain how it really works, talk through some of the pros and cons, and you can make your own mind up as to whether you think it's a good idea.
I'm going to skip over the part where we all agree that global warming is a huge existential problem and we should do whatever we can to minimise our carbon footprint. I think that's almost a given.
So carbon offsetting is one way that has been proposed for mainly Western countries that are pumping carbon into the atmosphere to offset, to counteract their actions by paying for initiatives that reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
Either initiatives that stop carbon going into the air in the first place or that remove, that take out, CO2 from the atmosphere.
The idea is that you have a 'carbon damage' balance, so that's the amount of carbon that you're responsible for putting into the air, which can be from driving a car, taking planes, heating or cooling your home, eating meat, or doing anything else that is putting carbon into the air.
And then you have a 'carbon repair' balance, which is the amount of carbon that you are responsible for taking out of the atmosphere, either through doing things that actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere, like planting trees, which absorb CO2 or through not putting it into the atmosphere in the first place, so for example, financing clean energy projects, so that the energy is generated without emitting carbon in the first place.
To go what is called 'carbon neutral', your carbon damage minus your carbon repair needs to be below zero, think of it like a bank balance. This typically happens by people paying for carbon repair in the form of carbon offsets.
So when you hear about rock stars, companies or even countries saying that they are carbon neutral, it doesn't mean that they are responsible for no emissions, but it means that their emissions or their carbon damage is offset by the carbon repair activities they are doing.
The slightly strange thing about this is that it's perfectly possible to fly all the way around the world on a private jet and burn coal all day long, but if you pay enough to offset these activities, technically you are still carbon neutral.
What's more, the cost of these carbon repair, these carbon offsetting activities, on a personal level is actually probably quite a lot less than you might think.
Offsetting a return flight from London to San Francisco, for example, would be about 20 pounds and offsetting a year's driving might be another 20 pounds, depending on the type of car that you drive of course.
Add all of these up to calculate the cost on a personal level, and it might seem like quite a small price to pay for the prize of saving the planet.
So it all sounds pretty good in theory, if we all just knew our carbon damage and made sure that it was offset by our carbon repair, is that just the solution to global warming?
Well, no, it's not quite so simple.
Despite its apparent simplicity, carbon offsetting has its fair share of critics and for some valid reasons.
George Monbiot, a famous environmental journalist from the British newspaper The Guardian, compared it to the ancient Catholic church's practice of selling indulgences, which is where you would be absolved, you'd be forgiven for your sins, and you would have reduced time in purgatory, in return for financial donations, in return for money given to the church.
He said that carbon offsets allow us to buy complacency, political apathy and self-satisfaction.
In plain English, it means that if there is an option for people to just pay the fine, to pay up, in exchange for their bad behaviour, they will just do it.
It allows people to continue to engage in all of these activities that are very carbon-heavy, and are big contributors to global warming, but not feel guilty because they are now carbon neutral as they have paid to offset their carbon.
You want to take a flight for a weekend away? Sure, you shouldn't feel bad about it because you can offset your carbon.
The criticism is that it doesn't address the root cause of global warming and in order to have any chance of reducing the carbon in the atmosphere, people's behaviour needs to change.
By promoting carbon offsets, the argument goes, there is no incentive for people's behaviour to change.
What's more, it's actually going the other way as society is saying that it's acceptable to just pay up and offset it.
People often make the comparison between carbon offsetting and things like daycare centre late fees where in order to deter, to discourage, parents from being late, from picking up their children from daycare, some daycare centres started to add fines, financial punishments, every time a parent was late.
It was intended to be a deterrent, to reduce the amount of times that parents were late to pick up their children, but actually had completely the opposite effect.
The frequency of parents being late actually increased because they felt they could just pay the fine and get on with it.
Critics of carbon offsetting also claimed that many projects will only have positive effects five, ten or twenty years down the line, in the future.
This is especially the case for things like tree planting.
Trees, obviously don't grow overnight, so even if you pay for tree planting now, it won't have any effect on your carbon footprint for many years and a tonne of carbon taken out of the sky today is worth much more than one taken out of the sky in five, ten or twenty years' time.
Now, in fact, the majority of carbon offsetting programmes have switched to more short-term wins, to quicker wins, from things like investing in clean energy to distributing more efficient cooking stoves.
So they switched to things where there is an immediate impact, and in many cases it's also a little bit more measurable.
But even with these, there's an additional problem, which is that it's often difficult to prove that the carbon offsetting schemes that have been put in place have actually had any positive impact or rather have had an impact that wouldn't have happened anyway.
For example, if there is a scheme that encourages people in a certain area to switch to an energy efficient light bulb, how can you really know whether people in that area wouldn't have switched anyway?
Yes, it's a good thing that they are using energy efficient light bulbs, but if they'd have made that switch anyway, then there's no point in paying to offset it if the behaviour would have happened in any case.
It also encourages the local government in the places where these offset initiatives are taking place not to engage in any of these kinds of activities if it knows that these activities will be done by others through carbon offsetting.
There's also the other criticism, similar to the criticism that is leveled at lots of charitable giving, which is you never know quite how efficient it is.
If you are giving $20 to offset something through a clean cooking project in Botswana, you have no idea how efficient your carbon offsetting is.
You'll never go there to check and there have been some bad operators in the carbon offsetting market that have sullied, that have damaged the reputation of the industry.
These are, of course, all valid concerns and the carbon offsetting industry has stepped up to the mark and implemented some rigorous standards and accreditations for carbon offsetting programmes.
A bit like fair trade or organic food.
This has done a lot to clamp down on bad actors and has meant that, in theory at least, carbon offsetting should be more efficient, more transparent, and that more of the money goes towards projects that actually have a positive effect instead of either just going into someone's pocket or being wasted altogether.
So what is the answer?
Is carbon offsetting a good thing or is it just another way for people to pay to not think about their polluting activities and to not change their behaviour in the slightest?
Well, it's of course not black and white and there isn't a one size fits all answer.
If you are someone that is just paying to offset their carbon and not changing your behaviour in any way, or worse, if you think that carbon offsetting allows you to behave in a more polluting way because you can just pay to offset it, then that's obviously not really a good thing at all.
You can make the argument that it's slightly better than not offsetting anything, but it doesn't address the root cause, which is the need for behaviour change.
But if you carbon offset as
part of a broader plan to reduce your carbon emissions and are also taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint through changing your behaviour and becoming more aware of the impact that you are having, then it becomes a little bit different.
In these circumstances, carbon offsetting is something that can be used as a tool for good, and I think that it certainly has its place.
What it cannot be is an excuse to continue living a carbon-heavy lifestyle and pay money to buy your way out of it.
It is not a silver bullet, a perfect solution that can solve the problem of global warming.
But as part of a broad set of measures to tackle climate change, it can be an effective tool.
And that, I think, is where I stand on the matter.
Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you next time.
---
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