Tuesday, August 18, 2009

California employees face quandary over carbon offsets

Al Gore buys them. So do the Grateful Dead, Hollywood celebrities and, increasingly, many climate-conscious executives and consumers. For those who travel the world by air but don't want to contribute to global warming in the process, compensating with so-called carbon offsets has become a fashionable solution. The sale of these credits for environmentally friendly activities, investments in everything from wind energy to carbon stored in forests, jumped from $97 million in 2006 to $331 million worldwide in 2007 – about a quarter of it in the United States. But one global green leader does not offset its travel, even though its employees regularly fly around the world warning about the dangers of climate change and devising strategies to combat it. That leader is the state of California. "As a state employee, you are put in an awkward situation," said Tony Brunello, deputy secretary of climate change and energy at the Natural Resources Agency who has traveled to Europe, South America and Indonesia. In all, more than two dozen top state officials and 19 legislators have logged more than a million air miles flying around the world on climate-related business since 2006, a recent Sacramento Bee investigation found. In the process, they emitted roughly 400,000 pounds of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere...SacramentoBee

There's no need for a quandary...just stay home.

3 comments:

Darren Weeks said...

The real story here is that in just one year, the price of a meaningless "carbon offset" more than tripled in price! And those are the ones that are being sold for "environmentally-friendly" purposes.

Can you imagine what is going to happen if everyone gets sucked up into this scam nation-wide? Once they have you in their web, they'll keep squeezing, squeezing, sqeezing...

Americans need to get just as angry about the climate change nonsense as they have about the socialization of our health care system.

Green Topaz said...

Get all the carbon offsets you want for free:

http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com

It will do as much good as the ones you pay for.

Anonymous said...

As soon as coin in coffer rings, the guilt from carbon footprint springs...