Green Carbon Offsets?

Karen,

A good placed to look might be the World Resources Institute. Here's a WRI link that may help you get started: http://www.wri.org/climate/pubs_description.cfm?pid=4037

Regards,
Kevin Devitt
Toronto, CANADA

Curious that you bring this up. We had a recent discussion on this with Doug Bennett, the water conservation director for Las Vegas NV. First, trees do certifiably absorb CO2 and create oxygen, ask any high school science teacher. LA has recently invoked the plant a million trees campaign. But, perhaps much more important, we are realising that in hot SW cities, trees that provide shading for roofs and walls of homes and buildings can greatly reduce the cooling costs AND nightime heat radiation. And that reduces carbon from power generation. Even installing solar shade screens on buildings can have a huge effect on cooling costs. Most of our SW cities were built without regard to passive heating and cooling technologies, now it is time to rectify this. Look at Phoenix right now- record heat due to concrete absorbing heat. All of the buildings in the sahara are white for a reason. If you would like more info on solar screens, write me. We use them in the high tech greenhouse industry.

Laurence Burbank Budd, CLT, CLIA

This is a really good question. There was an article on the internet recently about a report that said trees don't sequester carbon to the extent scientists thought, which I don't believe is true. The question in my mind that I've been looking for an answer to is when does the ground reach a saturation point after which it can't absorb more carbon dioxide. I participated in a teleconference last year with a couple of the best scientists in the U.S. on greenhouse gas emissions and asked this question. I got a vague answer indicating that it would happen but not for 100 years or so. That's not a lot of time in the broad scheme of things. I've read articles saying that the ocean, a huge carbon sink, has almost reached its saturation point and won't be able to absorp much more carbon dioxide. When that happens, I'm afraid we will really see global warming impacts speed up. Frankly, I think these carbon trading off-set schemes are smoke and mirror activities that make us feel better and allow us to continue to do what we are doing, rather than what we need to be doing, which is cutting green house gas emissions 80% across the board in our homes, communities, and around the world. I'm glad that people are thinking about how much carbon dioxide their activities are generating but hope they don't get lulled into a sense of smugness that they can pay to plant a few trees so they don't have to bite the bullet and make real changes in their behaviors. That being said, I think we need to be reforesting the earth ASAP with all sorts of trees and woody plants and halting the destruction of forests around the world for a host of worthwhile reasons, including carbon sequestration.

Nancy Adams