Offsetting schemes can be such rubbish, can’t they? A lot of them are based on planting trees, which just seems silly to me. OK the tree soaks up some carbon, but then it dies, rots, and the carbon gets released again – so if you offset by planting trees, all you are doing is deferring the problem 70 years or so into the future – which is pretty mean of you. Planting trees is probably better than nothing, but not emitting the carbon in the first place is even better than that.

Am I right on this? I think I must be wrong as that was George Bush’s objection to the Kyoto Protocol, so there must be something wrong with it?!

Other offsetting schemes provide money to get people to do things they would have done anyway. One of Pure’s schemes which Barclaycard are paying for is to provide some hydro-electric power in China. Should we be encouraging that? For a start, do China really need any more energy? And more important, is this actually going to stop China burning the equivalent amount of coal, or will they just do that anyway in addition? I rather suspect the latter.

Surely you’d be better off spending the money in a developed nation where growth has already been achieved, and you can be pretty sure that you are substituting the green power for the dirty power, rather than just giving a developing nation some more capacity? More development is the enemy after all.