BVCO Blog

I have just learned that Responsible Travel (www.responsibletravel.com) has decided to remove the option for carbon offsetting from its site.  This issue is tricky for a great number of reasons, and I am happy to read the discussion it has spawned.  I would like to add a bit of a counter-perspective, however.  It is quite true that just maintaining status quo operations is akin to apathy, and this act of removing carbon offsetting by Responsible Travel is quite bold, and will ultimately be necessary to enact positive change.  However, I would question the efficacy of removing it at this particular moment in time.  There is no question among intelligent environmentalist of the following two premises, 1) we are currently in trouble because of excessive carbon consumption habits, and 2) carbon offsetting is not the “solution” to reducing carbon consumption.  Unfortunately, we cannot yet declare the first statement false, and until we can, carbon offsetting must be considered an effective short term solution that helps us to work toward it.

Yes, carbon offsetting may indeed be a short term solution for a very long term problem that we face.  The truth remains, however, that carbon offsetting does reduce global emissions immediately, something most other climate education campaigns cannot claim.  Done correctly and in conjunction with educating the public about reducing the carbon footprint first, carbon offsetting can simultaneously achieve quantifiable reductions in global emissions, whilst bringing tangible environmental, social, and health benefits to communities where the projects are implemented. 

Most importantly, perhaps, is how offsetting  raises awareness about individual carbon consumption.  Previous comments have cited targets for per capita emissions, though I challenge anyone ask someone who has never offset a flight how much carbon a transatlantic flight will produce, or ask someone who has never considered offsetting emissions associated with their lifestyle how much their car or heating choice produces.  Without a reference point, this 2 t.p.a. target truly means nothing to the average consumer.  Offsetting personalizes, quantifies, and allows individuals to take ownership for their emissions choices.

The sort of paradigm shift that Responsible Travel is promoting is indeed noble, but will be difficult to realize.  I do applaud their effort and look forward to seeing exactly how they propose to use the travel industry to reduce carbon emissions.  In the meantime, I hope that truly responsible travelers will still consider offsetting what they do emit.  

Robert H. Frank, thank you.  He just published an article in the New York Times that represents what I hope is a tidal shift toward a more thoughtful look at offsetting a despite a few unfortunately dishonest cases.  He looks at moral environmental qualms from an economist’s perspectiveand solves them through the use of offsetting:”Consider the decision of whether to buy a hybrid car. Because of the expensive batteries and other complex equipment in such cars, they can cost much more than similar vehicles powered by standard combustion engines. Many people drive so little that they wouldn’t save enough on gasoline to recoup the higher cost. Yet many such people buy hybrids anyway, because they think they are helping the environment. Well and good, but they could help even more by buying a standard car and using the savings to buy carbon offsets.The same goes for someone who wonders whether it’s O.K. to eat foods grown far from home. A New Yorker may worry, for example, that the diesel fuel burned to ship California-grown tomatoes to him in winter will accelerate global warming. But suppose he would be happy to pay $10 more than the cost of shipping those tomatoes rather than eat locally grown root vegetables nine months a year. That would buy more than enough carbon offsets to neutralize the greenhouse gases emitted by shipping the tomatoes. So it would be much better, for him and the planet, if he bought offsets and ate winter tomatoes.”I think that this perspective, though perhaps needing to be backed up with some numbers, is an interesting stepping stone for discussion.  We need to remember that carbon offsets do not “solve global warming” (whatever that really means) and they don’t proclaim to.  What they DO do is successfully reduce global carbon emissions on a global scale and can be used to lower not just YOUR carbon footprint, but the total amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.  In the world where we live, this is necessary.  So, thank you Frank.  I’ll sign off with his final words (you can read his full article here, and think about offsetting through BVCO here): “Carbon offsets, though much maligned, are an excellent idea. If you want to help reduce carbon emissions, consider buying some.”

As I have been scanning the web for the newest directions for carbon offsetting, I have come across an interesting trend.  And no, this will not be an entry about all of doom and gloom of uncertain energy policies leading to a demise of carbon offsets (if that’s what you’re looking for though, here’s an interesting article from Australia), or an entry trying to stand up for the good companies that are using carbon offsetting as a short term solution as they try to make bigger policy changes to become more sustainable (like Google, for example –Bravo, Google!).   Funny enough, this entry is about weddings.  Wedding offsetting is coming into its own.  I was contacted recently by a wedding planning website asking about this, and her email came no less than a week after I had developed a new wedding calculator for our website, and just a few days before I managed to get it online (you can check it out here–I’ve tried to make it user friendly and fairly comprehensive, but would love feedback!).  More and more sites are doing this, taking advantage of weddings as a new avenue to promote offsetting.  Similarly, I just found this service, which allows brides to offset just the preservation of their wedding gowns!  Clearly, this is a trend to be thinking about.  The extravagance of weddings is best seen in the States, the place where I grew up (and got married).  The American Wedding Survey 2005 has estimated that the average US wedding has 165 guests with 54 of them requiring lodging and/or air travel.  By my rough calcuations, this means more than 15 tonnes of CO2 for this event.   Just for reference, this is more than  TWICE what the average Malaysian produces in a YEAR or about 9 round trip flights across the Atlantic.   But… A wedding is clearly a time when no expense is spared because we see it as a once in a lifetime event.  It’s special.  It allows us to temporarily shake off our otherwise rational personas and yeah, maybe decide that personal tropical fruit plates are fine in January if they fit the colour scheme and have a carmelised sauce like the one we had on our first date and…  We get sucked in.  I’m glad that weddings are becoming more green and that offsetting is being considered to combat the exorbitant (and growing…) carbon footprints that they create.  I just hope that the principle of offsetting and taking responsibility for carbon emissions isn’t as quickly forgotten as the ridiculous embossed napkins that were also somehow rationalised into the budget.  

Henry Stewart, chief executive of Happy Ltd, recently blogged about being the first UK training provider to announce it is carbon neutral.  His rationale–not just altruism or concern for the future, but to save company money and increase employee engagement.  He cites the example of Morrisons’ Supermarket saving 3.4 million a year by reducing energy use, and goes on to give 10 tips to reduce carbon impact of your business.  We say, good for you, Henry Stewart, and here’s to hoping this is starting an accellerating trend.  If you’re interested in his ten tips, you can find them in them here.  

An exciting new scheme to offer consumer confidence in carbon offset schemes has been announced today.  According to their website and press release, “The Quality Assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting is a Government-led initiative aimed at increasing consumers’ understanding of the role of offsetting in tackling climate change and helping them to make informed purchases of good-quality offsets.”  Unfortunately, it precludes the small offset providers who are succcessfully mitigating carbon through projects that lack international verification.  Buried deep within the approval requirements document is one sentence that makes many providers inelligible:  ”10. Approved offsets must use good quality carbon credits. For this scheme these are currently: CERs, ERUs, and phase 2 EUAs.”  Furthermore, the approval process can cost anywhere from 750 to 10,000 pounds!  This is a step in the right direction in terms of ensuring transparency and additionality in offsetting, though it will hopefully be modified to allow for smaller offset companies to be similarly approved.  Details of the scheme can be found here.

I was asked recently about the connection between Blue Ventures Conservation and BVCO recently, and after giving my usual response going into how BVCO was created to address a percieved need in the communities where conservation initiatives were in place, I started thinking a bit more about the connection between carbon and the seas.  If I had thought it through more, I would have given a response a bit more like this one.

The sea is the single largest carbon sink on earth, and this is both a good thing and a very bad thing for us right now.  It’s estimated that between a third and half of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean, and this keeps the planet from warming too quickly–essentially keeping the greenhouse gasses from actually forming the “glass” of the greenhouse in the atmosphere.  Some of this might be changed back to atmospheric CO2 on the surface, but most of it is taken taken to the ocean’s depths by a series of current mechanisms.  Historically (and mostly pre-historically) this was a perfect system, and the dissolved carbon dioxide was slowly taken up by various sea creatures and plants, and then deposited in the sediment, so that the overall concentration of CO2 in the sea did not rise.  Slowly moving currents mean that it takes hundreds, and even over a thousand years for a dissolved CO2 molecule to make its way back to the surface once dissolved. All this sounds fairly benign, but here’s the rub: we’ve been putting a huge pressure on this system and it’s not working particularly well anymore–WAY more CO2 is going in than is being taken out.

Said succinctly by a recent article in The Economist (”Troubled Waters”, 30th Dec, 2008): “Until the Industrial Revolution, the exchanges among the three [atmospheric, oceanic, land-based CO2 sources] were more or less in equilibrium. But now the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for at least 365,000 years (some say 650,000), even though about half the CO₂ produced in the past 200 years by burning fossil fuels and making cement has gone into the sea. As a result, the sea is 30% more acidic than it would have been without man’s new activities.”

30%! Here’s some of what this means in real-life terms:

-because of the timescale for ocean mixing, the acidity cannot be lowered quickly (remeber, that CO2 molecule dissolving now is stuck there for up to another 1000 years)

-many scientific papers have contended that this could mean the slow demise of calcarous sea creatures.  Decreased pH in the oceans (because of the extra CO2) makes it more difficult for organisms like coral, starfish, molluscs, and other shellfish to create exoskeletons, and can even cause exoskeletons to dissolve.

-Food.  Another creature that builds a calcarous shell: plankton, also known as one of the most important food sources for oceanic life, creating a knock-on effect through the food chain.

-Loss of reef means habitat loss and decreased biodiversity, as reefs are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth.  Because of acidification, in tandem with warming and pollution, it is predicted that over half of the world’s coral could be gone by 2030.  This is coral that has been slowly forming for hundreds and thousands of years and creates habitat for countless sea creatures, and protects us naturally from coastal erosion.

So it’s important, this relationship between carbon and the sea.  If I am asked again, or if you are, the answer will come a bit more quickly I hope.

How impressed should we be about carbon neutrality?  How much of it is a legitimate attempt at reducing global carbon emissions and how much is sheer marketing?  Last week, Motorola came out with the first carbon neutral mobile phone, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  The W233 Renew is made from recycled material (casing is made from recycled water bottles) and the phone is also fully recyclable.  Carbon emissions are then offset through carbonfund for the manufacture, distribution, and operation of the phone.  I think the most interesting part of this phone, which should be available in the US this year and hopefully in Europe soon after, is that it is an attempt to merge cost cutting with eco-friendliness.  The phone is relatively frills-free, offering 2 GB memory but no camera or bluetooth, it caters to the less techie purchaser, and the phone is fairly cheap too.  While no official pricing has been given, those in the know are estimating that it will retail for less than $100.  Because it is missing some of the complex features of other new phones, it compensates with a long battery life (9 hours talk!) so it doesn’t need to be charged often and therefore saves energy by not being plugged in.  (UK estimates vary as to how much energy is used by charging phones annually, though the unpluggit campaign estimates that it is enough to power about 33,000 homes for a year).

In truth, this isn’t the first attempt at making a “green” phone.  Nokia and LG have worked on projects to create phones with wooden cases, though this may well have been to increase aesthetic appeal as much as environmental, and Samsung has also worked with recycled material to some extent.  This new phone is a small example, but it’s a step in a new direction though.  I think that simultaneously reducing the production costs, operational costs, and carbon footprint of an electronic device is a notable achievement.  I also believe that unveiling a phone that actually has fewer features is a bold step, perhaps showing us that we what we need, need not be as complex.

So, congratulations Motorola, we hope to see the phone in the UK soon, and hope you might consider BVCO to offset the footprints of the phones here!

How green are you?  Is there any truth that people who purchase carbon offsets are doing so to ease a guilty conscious of flagrant overindulgence of finite resources? 

The same study by Tyndall indicates both yes and no.  Those that offset tend to have a higher level of education, especially in the sciences, and know more about climate change in general.  Similarly, their daily lifestyles tend to be quite a bit “greener” and they take the global impacts of their everyday actions into account far more than those that don’t offset.  Unsurprisingly, they have a better understanding of carbon offsetting as well.  However, another interesting finding is that the people who offset tend to fly far more often than those that do not offset, both for holidays and business.

If offsetters really do have a higher level of climate education and understand the immense carbon contribution of flying, why don’t they reduce the amount they fly—at least superfluous flights for holidays?  Does this mean that knowledge is irrelevant to behavior?  How do we bridge this rift between what we believe (often very passionately) and what we actually do? 

We’ve probably all heard the tales of excessively large mansions owned by Al Gore, which use up to 20 times the national average of electricity (http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367), and perhaps you’ve heard the term batted of “Lexus liberals” meaning those that are rich enough to get fired up about environmental issues but continue driving their gas guzzling SUV as if it’s their job?  The problem is epidemic really, and it’s a difficult one to solve.  It seems as if the past few decades have operated with the mantra “if we teach them, they will change”, but this seems to be proving false.  Perhaps it’s time for the environmental movement to adopt a new mantra?

There has been very little research about the demographics of people who offset their carbon footprints vs those that do not, but preliminary studies show some interesting trends.  An ongoing study by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is initially showing that those that offset (in the UK) and those that don’t have the striking similarity of distrust of carbon offsetting companies (!!!!  This surprised me, does it surprise you?).  People do not seem to trust that carbon offsetting companies are using the funds they are given in a true and verifiable way.  This of course begs the questions of what would increase people’s confidence in carbon offsetting as a means of mitigating carbon globally?  And furthermore, what makes a project “good” and worthy of your offsetting funds?  We’d like to hear from you on this, so please post comments or email us directly.  Your thoughts?

BVCO is a small company and struggles with this very question all the time.  Springing from the loins of a conservation charity, we have evolved with the leading premise that our projects must first and foremost benefit the local community.  We are completely confident that projects that we support are beneficial in that sense as well as truly mitigating the carbon that is promised.  We purposefully have a very small number of projects that we support, and have strong personal relationships with the people on the ground that implement them.  The projects that we support must share our vision of helping people by spreading beneficial and wanted technologies to communities in need.  We are verified by TICOS and, more importantly to us, we have education campaigns, trainings, and surveys before and throughout the implementation period.  We would like to hear from you though.  Do you fit this demographic of distrust despite being an offsetter?  What would ease your nerves about a carbon offsetting company (BVCO or otherwise?)

Hi.  Welcome to the BVCO blog.  We’re glad you’ve made it.  Grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and have a read.  We hope you will feel at home here, and join in the conversations.  As a part of our community, we value your opinions and thoughts.  Carbon offsetting is an evolving venture, and we know that to be stagnant in this business is akin to failure.  As we have said many times before, we would love to live in a world where carbon offsetting did not exist, where we all lived with a small and sustainable carbon footprint and the earth held ample renewable resources to meet the needs of each. Sadly, we do not live in that world right now.  Nearly 75 tonnes of carbon dioxide are being pumped into the atmosphere every day and each of us must take ownership of our share.  We think that promoting fuel efficient stoves and solar cookers in impoverished communities is one way to mitigate some of this carbon, and this is what we promote.  If you are reading this, you are intrigued by this possibility as well, and we’re glad that you are.  We hope that working together we can raise awareness of climate change and carbon responsibility, and promote ways to reduce carbon globally.  So stay tuned and keep in touch!  All the best to you, and here’s to a good year in 2009!