Carbon offsetting provokes a powerful emotional response in some people. They just don’t like the idea that you can pay someone else to mop up your carbon emissions. It smacks of indulgence and cheating. Critics say buying an offset while continuing to fly, or drive an SUV, or live in a mansion with all the lights on, is at ...

One of the biggest problems with offsetting is ensuring ‘additionality’ – proving that the offsets that you are buying in order to counterbalance your carbon emissions would not have happened without yours and other similar contributions. Often the projects sound intrinsically worthwhile – protecting threatened original forest, supporting conversion to renewable energy, installing low energy light bulbs, etc. – and ...

Something that worries many people about offsetting emissions with trees is how can you guarantee that they will last long enough? Trees take time to absorb carbon, extracting it slowly from the atmosphere as they grow. But saplings are vulnerable to bad weather, neglect and damage by animals. Older woodlands and forests face the risk of fire, pests and disease, ...

If climate change is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels isn’t offsetting with trees simply a distraction? Shouldn’t we focus on renewable energy projects that can replace the use of fossil fuel?

Every Thursday night, like every other householder in our neighborhood, I collect our waste paper, cans, bottles and plastic and put them out on the street outside our house. On Friday morning a local municipal truck comes by and collects it for recycling. I pay for this service through my taxes. Apart from some gripes about the efficiency of the ...