The trouble with carbon offsets

Carbon off-setting was in the paper again the other day. The headline was : ‘Easyjet slams ‘snake oil sellers’ in offset market and goes it alone‘ – basically, Easyjet is coming up with it’s own system, since there are so many overpriced offset programmes that are exploiting well meaning people, and might not actually be delivering on the ground.
But while the controversy of false offset advertising is going on, I think there’s a much bigger issue at stake here: offsets aren’t a real solution. If you have to use a car, or are still trying to figure out how to live without one, please do offset your emissions. But offsetting cannot allow us to carry on polluting. Planting trees on the other side of the world does not make it okay for us to keep living at an unsustainable level. We are being led to believe that by offsetting our emissions we can maintain our current lifestyle, but the damage is still being done. What offsetting basically does is pass on the hard choices to someone else. We want to be greener, but we don’t want to stop flying or driving our cars, so we pay someone else to be greener for us.

For example, the offsets agency Climate Care will take your money, and will encourage a farmer in India to give up his diesel pump and irrigate his fields with a hand pump like this on the right instead. You can read about this on their website right here, because they don’t think it’s remotely embarassing.
It reminds me of the medieval court, and the tradition of the whipping boy. If a young prince misbehaved, the whipping boy would be beaten instead of him, because it wasn’t right to hit royalty. Offets treat the third world as our whipping boys. We get to carry on polluting the earth, and Africa and India can make the sacrifices we ought to be making.

By all means offset, but please don’t think of it as a long-term solution. We all need to take responsibility for our own lifestyles, rather than sweeping our bad habits under the carpet.