Climate Change and Carbon Offsetting: A primer to get you started...

What???  If you’ve been doing some research on carbon offsetting, you’ve probably realized that this whole business is extremely complicated, a veritable alphabet soup of three letter acronyms that can be confusing and even sometimes contradictory.  If you’re like a lot of people, you want to do your part to combat human-induced climate change, but can be put off by the complexity, and don’t want to spend your time and cash on a project that is less than reputable.  As you’ll realise with BVCO, we don’t think it needs to be so complicated.  We’re a small company with a big idea: carbon offsetting must be community-based and help people.  So here’s our attempt to make this whole business a bit more, well, rational. 

It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or listen to the news without hearing the term “climate change”, usually said with a grim tone and ominous feel.  It has become a common household term, batted about again and again, even though it’s often misunderstood.  Because the premise of climate change is part of what underlies BVCO’s mission, we think it’s important that we all get on the same page about what it really means.

First off, a bit of science.  What does “climate change” really mean?

When you hear people saying “Climate Change” these days, they’re usually referring to increasing temperatures that are happening because of human activity.  Our modern lifestyle, which requires huge amounts of fossil fuels, is changing the planet in major ways. 

The earth’s climate is warming, this is becoming increasingly clear, and it’s becoming a lot warmer than would be expected by any sort of natural variation.  We don’t want to get too technical here, and believe me we could with all the information out there, but if you look at a graph of average temperatures over the past hundred years or so, it looks like this:

The blue line shows temperatures, and the yellow and red lines show carbon dioxide levels.  First, look at temperature.

As you can see, the temperature varies a lot, up for a while, down for a while, but the overall trend is very much increasing. In fact, last century the world’s average surface temperature rose by 0.74ºC – greater than any rate over the last 1000 years.  It’s impossible to predict the future exactly, but the International Panel on Climate Change has projected another 1.1 - 6.4ºC increase in the next century, due to increases in CO₂ emissions caused by humans.  For more information about climate change, click here.
(Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007-02-05).)

What does this have to do with CARBON offsetting?
Well, here’s what.
When we say reducing carbon, it’s a misnomer.  We actually mean “carbon dioxide”, the stuff we breathe out all day long and is created every time we drive our car, light a fire, take a flight, and almost everything else in our modern lives.  Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.  It sits up there in the atmosphere, lets in the light and heat from the sun, but then traps the heat in, thus keeping the planet warm.  This is a good thing, and has been happening for millions and millions of years; it keeps us from permanent ice age and allows life on earth, but it’s getting a bit out of hand with all the excessive carbon dioxide our lifestyle is creating.

Now look back at that graph.  You can see that the temperature line tracks the line showing carbon dioxide levels.  In fact, it’s possible to analyse the trapped air in ice cores from the Antarctic and find evidence of climatic change going back 400,000 years (that’s four ice-age / warming cycles!).  As you can see, even going back that far, it’s clear there is a clear relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and temperature.  More CO2 means a warmer planet.  And a warmer planet, as lovely as that may sound on a dreary London day, is actually very bad news. 

Graph source: http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/, New Antarctic Ice Core Data; http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel-flask/sio-keel-flaskmlo_c.html and http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html, Carbon Dioxide Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S.

So why is climatic warming a bad thing?  What’s a few degrees?

If our rate of warming continues, here’s some of what we can expect…  Melting land-based glaciers, meaning no fresh water for human populations, which means disease and famine, increased chance of extinctions of plants and animals that aren’t able to migrate or adapt to changing climate, sea level rise inundating coastal communities, loss of arctic habitat for threatened species like the polar bear, more variable climate and stronger storms…  Again, this list could go on and on, and we don’t mean to sound so dire.  But the truth is, this is serious. 

What can be done by you?

So, now you’re probably thinking, geez, this is horrible.  I feel awful, my lifestyle is killing polar bears!  What should I do? 
Well, the first thing is to take stock of your own life.  There are things you can change and things you can’t.  Likewise, there are things you want to change, and things maybe you don’t.  In 2006, WWF published a report that calculated how many “earths” are needed to support the lifestyles of various countries and the results were a bit disturbing…  If everyone in the world lived like people in the UK, it would require just over 5 planets to provide the resources!  If everyone lived the average lifestyle in the USA, it would require more than 9!  On the other hand, Madagascar currently uses less than one.  We’re certainly using more than our fair share of resources. (WWF, Global Footprint Network, Zoological Society of London (2006) Living Planet Report 2006. WWF Gland, Switzerland)

So, what to do?  In a word: Simplify.  Drive less.  Use compact fluorescent lightbulbs in your home and turn lights and appliances off when you’re not using them.  Fly less.  Walk more.  Eat local, seasonal food to reduce the transport costs of shipping food to you.  Buy organic when you can.  Turn your thermostat down just a few degrees.  Make sure your tyres are properly inflated on your car.  Drive the speed limit and not above.  Reuse what you can, and recycle more of what you can’t. 

But I can’t get rid of all my carbon emissions, can I?

The truth is, that even if you do change your life significantly, you will probably still not be living a “carbon free” lifestyle after doing all of this, and this is when BVCO comes in.  We believe first and foremost we should all be trying to make changes in our own lives to reduce global warming.  But we’re honest enough to know that this isn’t enough, and in the meantime, carbon is still being pumped into the atmosphere at an incredible rate.  What we do is allow you to help on the global scale as well as on your own individual scale.  To help reduce global carbon, we’ve started projects to distribute fuel-efficient cooking stoves and solar cookers to impoverished communities in Southern Africa.  These stoves have been carefully field-tested and use is fully monitored after distribution to assess how much carbon is saved by using these methods of cooking rather than burning firewood. 

So, why stoves?

The reason BVCO is sponsoring stoves is because of our belief that carbon offsets must directly benefit the communities in which they’re implemented.  We know too well that some offset projects not only don’t do this, but can actually make life more difficult for the populations involved.  BVCO was created as a subsidiary of Blue Ventures Conservation, a charity that operates out of Andavadoaka, Madagascar to research and protect marine habitats.  Volunteers and researchers work together with local community members to learn about and protect fragile resources.  BVCO was founded in 2007 because in living in this small community, we saw a need.  We saw a scarcity of firewood, we saw how much time women and children were taking out of their day—often their school day, to collect the wood.  We saw asthma and other symptoms of constant smoke inhalation, we saw horrible burns from falling on burning embers, and precariously set pots boiling over.  We developed this project locally, village by village, with interviews and surveys to assess need, and then using funds generated by offsets to fill those needs with efficient stoves.  We aim to have our projects be beneficial to local communities, fully transparent in terms of distribution and funding, and truly additional, meaning that they truly do reduce the amount of carbon that would have been used with other methods.

We new run projects in the Toliara region of Madagascar, as well as in three areas of South Africa, distributing stoves with the help of ADES and Sunfire Solutions.  Individuals and businesses offset through us, and become a part of our community, given quarterly updates on our progress and the progress of the stoves they make possible.

Is carbon offsetting really the answer?

We all have this feeling sometimes.  A slightly squeamish feeling about whether this is the best way combat the problem of climate change.  It might feel like a cop-out solution to get someone else to change while you go on carrying out an unsustainable lifestyle.  And to be honest, there may be a bit of truth in these statements.  At BVCO, we agree that the most important step in combating human-induced climate change is to make personal lifestyle changes.  Check out the section “carbon reduction tips” for some ideas.  In an ideal world, carbon offsetting would be unnecessary because we would all be living a “one planet” lifestyle.  Saying this though, we’re also realistic.  We work for change at home, but we also know it takes time.  We want to do everything we can in the meantime to reduce global CO2 emissions because we know the global repercussions of increasing CO2 concentrations.  We do so by simultaneously meeting specific needs of impoverished communities that we know well.  We are trying to do our part to help lives and help the planet, and working toward sustainability one family at a time.  You can help and we hope you will.

To learn more about our services, click here.