Offsetting is the practice of compensating for pollution from one source or location by reducing or mitigating pollution from another--for example, planting trees to offset carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from vehicle use. Individuals have become more conscious of their possible impact on global climate (referred to as their "carbon footprint"), as well as of the difficulties of reducing GHG emissions. Thus, an idea has emerged that increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a given source can be mitigated--or "offset"--by parallel activities to decrease emissions from another source or to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in sinks.

Using vegetation to remove carbon from the atmosphere was proposed as early as 1976 by physicist Freeman Dyson. A decade later, in 1988, one of the first projects to provide an offset for carbon emissions-- the planting of 52 million trees in Guatemala-- was undertaken at the instigation of the Arlington, Virginia, energy company Applied Energy Services to justify a proposed power station. By the late 1990's, celebrity participation began to popularize the idea of individuals offsetting their carbon-emitting activities by paying companies to engage in tree planting and other green activities.

For example, the Rolling Stones in 2003 highlighted "carbon neutral touring," paying the company Future Forests to plant trees to neutralize the environmental impact of their British concerts: The Edinburgh Center for Carbon Management calculated that one tree for every 60 of the band's anticipated 160,000 fans should suffice (Dyson, 1977). (The following year, questions were raised about how Future Forests was spending its money, and the company subsequently renamed itself the Carbon Neutral Company.) In 2006, former vice president and later Nobel laureate Al Gore applied the idea to his influential book, An Inconvenient Truth: "By supporting a new Native American wind farm and a new family farm methane energy project through NativeEnergy, this publication is carbon neutral." The emphasis on newness reflects the so-called additionality requirement--that any carbon decrease produced by an offset be additional to what would otherwise occur. Such counterfactual claims are notoriously uncertain. Though such offsetting does focus attention on the environmental impact of people's lifestyle choices, critics view it as either confused (because of insurmountable problems in definition and measurement) or self-deceptive (because people are questionably encouraged to believe their environmental impact has really been neutralized).

On a larger scale, analogous issues arise about carbon emissions trading among, or within, nations.

In agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism, many countries have committed to reduce GHGs by certain future dates, but such agreements sometimes permit targets to be reached through credits for activities that remove CO2 from the atmosphere (carbon sequestration) or that reduce the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere (alternative energy), even if emissions are otherwise increasing. Critics of carbon trading question whether pollution is really offset, pointing to scams, misjudgments, and counterproductive efforts. They also challenge the fairness of offsets, criticizing in the name of environmental justice what has been labeled "CO2lonialism." "Carbon forestry," Larry Lohmann complained in 1999, proposes to lessen the atmospheric effects of the mining of fossil fuels by colonizing still other resources and exerting new pressures on local land and water rights; the community evicted by oil drillers today may find itself displaced by carbon- "offset" plantations tomorrow.

Nearly a decade later, Dyson remarked: "The humanist ethic accepts an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere as a small price to pay, if worldwide industrial development can alleviate the miseries of the poor half of humanity." The empirical and ethical complexities of the offsetting issue are highlighted by the fact that Dyson and his critics both claim the moral high ground.

References

1. Dyson, Freeman J. "Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?" Energy 2 (1977): 287- 291.

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