Are carbon credits a scam?
We get a lot of email at Carbon Planet, almost all of it encouraging, but some of it raises interesting objections to the whole concept of carbon credits. Take this one, sent in via our feedback form but without a valid email address.
You are shit. Scams like this diminish the reputation and value of work done by honesty people. The best way to reduce carbon is to eliminate the carbon coming from scum like you!
Obvious lapses in grammar aside, the poster really does seem to be very angry about the work we do. But, as the US President said just over 5 years ago, “out of catastrophe comes opportunity.”
Our friend seems to be arguing that carbon credits have little or no effect; and that they are little more that a scam. So please let me explain how your buying carbon credits actually helps the environment, and really does reduce CO2 levels.
Carbon Planet buys carbon credits in the form of NGACs (New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Certificates) from NSW Forests, a department of the NSW Government in Australia. NSW Forests manage and expand native forests such that they can guarantee that the carbon sequestered is stored for 100 years. This is what you are paying for when you buy carbon credits. There are many ways of generating NGACs but the net effect is the same. Each forestry NGAC certifies that one tonne of CO2 has been removed from the air and stored for 100 years. You can read more about this at greenhousegas.nsw.gov.au.
When you give us your money we create an account for you in the NSW Government’s Greenhouse Gas Registry and then transfer ownership of the appropriate amount of NGACs from our account to yours. You get a username and password for the registry so you can log-in for yourself and check your carbon balance.
It doesn’t matter where in the world you live, 1 tonne of CO2 is 1 tonne of CO2.
Our friend is right in one respect: It is better to reduce your emissions naturally before you consider offsetting them. To that end it’s vital you know where your emissions come from.
Carbon Planet provides an emissions audit service for businesses that really want to know in detail what their emissions’ sources are, and how they might eliminate them naturally; through behavioural changes such as replacing lights with lo-energy lamps, or switching to green power, or using rail-freight over air-freight. Depending on the nature of your business you can probably make amazing reductions in your emissions at little or no cost, and then simply offset the rest.
I hope that clears that up. Please contact us using the links on the right if you’d like to know more about our business emissions audit services, or about personal subscriptions to carbon credits. You can be the change®. — DS
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