Carbon offsets ‘harm environment’

The current trend for “offsetting” carbon emissions by planting trees is doing more harm to the environment than good, MPs have been told.

The public is being “seriously misled” by companies peddling carbon offset schemes, campaigner Jutta Kill told the environmental audit committee.

The schemes did not reduce emissions and simply gave industry a “licence to pollute” elsewhere, she argued.
Carbon offsetting was “an unbelievably inefficient way of reducing emissions,” she argued, and its effects were impossible to verify.

In addition, “More than half” of the money given to companies selling carbon offsets went on research and administration costs, “benefiting not the climate but the burgeoning consultancy industry”.

“We believe it is worse than nothing because it creates the illusion, or the impression, in the public that action is being taken, while we are not really addressing the task at hand, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Ms Kill told MPs.

BBC