{"id":887,"date":"2011-09-28T01:26:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T01:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/?p=887"},"modified":"2011-09-28T01:26:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T01:26:28","slug":"stop-offsets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/2011\/09\/stop-offsets\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop! Don’t Offset… Carbon Offsets the Snake Oil of CO2 Mitigation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mr. Smith's Miracle Carbon Offsets! They rid you off your CO2 emissions and the heavy money in your pocket!<\/p><\/div>\n

by Sam Parker, ’12<\/p>\n

In 2009, there was a bill, called the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, that has passed through the House and was killed in the Senate. \u00a0This bill was potentially one of the most significant climate laws to have ever been seen in the U.S. \u00a0It would instate a Cap and Trade system of carbon trading on U.S.\u00a0coal power plants . \u00a0This bill came under much scrutiny from many different places. Possibly the biggest\u00a0criticism was the effects Cap and Trade may have had on the economy. \u00a0I wish to criticize a different aspect of this bill, offsets. \u00a0As noted by Laurie Williams and Allen Zabel in there video\u00a0The Huge Mistake<\/a>, the bill would have allowed for the companies to purchase carbon offsets to mitigate there CO2 emissions for 20 years after the bill was put into place. \u00a0In\u00a0Another\u00a0Inconvenient Truth<\/a>, an article by Ben Elgin, he discusses the implications of many carbon offsets. \u00a0“Done carefully, offsets can have a positive effect and raise ecological awareness. But a close look at several transactions… reveals that some deals amount to little more than feel-good hype”. \u00a0 This was going to be potentially true for the carbon offsets that would be purchased by the\u00a0coal\u00a0companies. \u00a0There was no requirement for certifications of the offsets, just that they claimed to be offsets. \u00a0Again, many carbon offsets are\u00a0legitimate and do provide the offset of carbon they claim, but with the market and demand for offsets growing rapidly, there is a higher risk of\u00a0illegitimate offsets.<\/p>\n

In many cases offsets will be need to accomplish goals of CO2 reductions, as we can see here at Dickinson with our attempts to achieve carbon neutrality. \u00a0We have seen that there is no way for us to reach true neutrality while still in\u00a0operation, but the purchasing of offsets will help us to reach our goal. \u00a0the same may be true for companies under a cap and trade system. \u00a0Placing restrictions on the types of offsets and the number that can be purchased. \u00a0Ideally, no carbon offset would have been allowed and all mitigation strategies would occur directly to the plant them selves. \u00a0This would insure the shift from “dirty” to “clean” energy and bring quantifiable reductions in CO2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sam Parker, ’12
\nIn 2009, there was a bill, called the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, that has passed through the House and was killed in the Senate. \u00a0This bill was potentially one of the most significant climate laws to have ever been seen in the U.S. \u00a0It would instate a Cap and Trade system of carbon trading on U.S.\u00a0coal power plants . \u00a0This bill came under much scrutiny from many different places. Possibly the biggest\u00a0criticism was the effects Cap and Trade may have had on the economy. \u00a0I wish to criticize a different aspect of this bill, offsets. \u00a0As noted by Laurie Williams and Allen Zabel in there video\u00a0The Huge Mistake, the bill would have allowed for the companies to purchase carbon offsets to mitigate there CO2 emissions for 20 years after the bill was put into place. \u00a0In\u00a0Another\u00a0Inconvenient Truth, an article by Ben Elgin, he discusses the implications of many …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":629,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1891,19448,34197,42301],"tags":[1399,40517,25711,40518],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carbon-markets","category-climate-change-2","category-key-cop17-issues","category-climate-change-mosaic","tag-cap-and-trade","tag-carbon-offsets","tag-sam-parker","tag-snake-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/629"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}