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A couple of colleagues have circulated links to websites offering the opportunity to offset the CO2 created by my energy consumption in return for monetary payment.

eg

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/index.html
http://www.cooldrivepass.com/home.cfm
http://www.offsetters.ca/

Thanks for the links, but all of these people are asking for money and offering little but vague assertions in return. This is not intended to deny the good intentions of either the Native Power people linked to by Al Gore or of the IRES folks and their friends at WestJet, or I guess of any other chap who puts up a website and offers a $60 absolution for the CO2 I spewed on my flight to India last year. But none of these sites offer convincing proof that my $60 payment will somehow suck back all that CO2. So how can I tell that what salves my conscience will indeed undo the effects of my sin?

This business of buying remission reminded me of the mediaeval practice of selling indulgences and a quick Google search confirmed that I was not the first to make that connection:

Monbiot.com � Selling Indulgences

George Monbiot showed (in November 2005) that, even with extremely generous assumptions about the plausible extent of resource usage, renewable energy sources will not suffice to replace what he believes must be cut from our carbon combustion rate.

But then (in July 2006) he continued to deny what may be the only feasible solution, despite recognizing many errors in previous arguments against it, on the grounds that “To start building a new generation of nuclear power stations before we know what to do with the waste produced by existing plants is grotesquely irresponsible.” This while blithely suggesting as an alternative that “With similar levels of investment in energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage, and the exploitation of the vast new offshore wind resources the government has now identified(13), we could cut our carbon emissions as swiftly and as effectively as any atomic power programme could.” But the technology of capture and sequestration is far from well established and the wind power he refers to is just what he showed in the article above to be far less than enough to meet his country’s needs. He does conclude by mentioning that neither the gas nor the wind resources in North America are proportionately nearly as large as those of the UK.

A group of my colleagues at Langara College have been looking at the possibility of significantly increasing the attention paid to environmental sustainability – both in terms of our college’s physical operations and in terms of what we teach. Some feel that what is needed can be accomplished within our existing governance structures and others demand some new source of direction. Rather than be distracted by debating this in the abstract it would be better to push on and see what we can do with the present structure, and let any suggestions for change be informed by that experience.