Photo: lydurs
We must fight global warming
On paper, carbon offsetting certainly seems like a good idea: have companies and governments fund wind farms and other sources of renewable energy in order to offset the carbon footprint they produce every year. As such, even if the company produces the same amount of carbon, or perhaps even more carbon, than they did the previous year, they can still say that they have done their part to reduce the total amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.
The reality, however, is that carbon offsetting simply is not an effective strategy to stop global warming. There are any number of reasons why this is the case, but the most basic flaw is the fact that offsetting allows companies and governments to go on releasing the same amounts of carbon as they ever did instead of directly reducing emissions. That is to say, while carbon offsetting encourages these groups to be responsible for their actions, it does nothing to make them change their underlying behavior.
We must fight global warming directly. This means that there need to be hard caps on carbon emissions, and all parties involved will need to meet those cap requirements when they are instituted and not defer adherence to them to another day or another place. If nothing else, this would force those currently producing the highest amounts of carbon to innovate, because innovation would not be simply a matter of throwing money at a renewable energy program whose success had nothing to do with them, but a matter of survival. Only when it becomes a matter of sinking or swimming will they finally get serious about reducing their emissions and take the fight against global warming directly to its source.
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