Carbon Offsets

Carbon Offsets seem to be the latest Western disease doing the rounds. Simply put, carbon offsetting is paying for your sins through supposedly doing good elsewhere instead of stop sinning in the first place.The argument put forward here seems to be that since it is almost impossible to stop adding Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere, you might mitigate the effect by enhancing carbon sequestration elsewhere. This way you could also add value down the chain to the locals too. Sadly, this thread of thought has many one too many knots in it.

The question whether these so called offset measures are actually unto any good at all is the biggest party popper.

Suppose you are a fossil fuel guzzling steel making unit. Now since either your conscience torments you about your personal contribution to tons of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere or more likely, the environmental watchdogs might tear you to bits, you decide to offset your carbon production by planting thousands of trees in say Rwanda. So Rwanda finds itself covered with a lot more trees and everybody should be patting each other on their backs. However, not everything is right in the state of Rwanda. It might so happen that a few thousand tribes who went to sleep one night dreaming about tomorrow's money from the firewood and other forest produce might wake up to find themselves surrounded by funny looking saplings (they might actually be Eucalyptus, but remember, the average Rwanda guy wouldn't know one if it went for a picnic with him) and their livelihood gone.

So then after all, Carbon offsets might not be all milk and honey as they seem. A number of offsetting methods exist but nevertheless, none of them have been found to be faultless as the entire Carbon cycle is yet to be unravelled completely. Climate change is a complex and dynamic process because of which each case needs to be studied in specific.

(to be followed by a few case in points about Carbon Offsetting methods)