Green, green grass of…

Maybe I’m hard of thinking but I never really understood the sensibility of carbon offsets and the purchase of carbon credits. I, like most of you, understand the little form a person fills out online, at the completion of which the carbon footprint calculator spits out a dollar figure. No problem with little online calculators. And, I “get” the dollar figure that appears in the little box as the amount you should consider donating to a Carbon Credit Canada project. Ya, ya I “get” the actual mechanics of buying your way into eco-sensitive heaven. If you’ve got the money and are honest when filling out the form and you’re inclined to remit your payment then, voila! You pay up and you’re on a CO2 emitting jet to the all-natural, raw food, grass fed, crunchy granola, locally sourced, weedy-front-yard, un-Monsanto’d dream state side, except you don’t actually have to practise what you’ve just paid to preach. So seriously, how many people go to the CCC website, read all of the material available, do the calculations and make a remittance to buy the carbon credit? To the average, everyday person —who has to work to eat, hasn’t got time to mulch much less compost, or just looks at the organic produce and opts for the wallet-friendly greenery and can’t afford to replace all of their appliances with the most recent ener/eco/best—carbon credits are something the big players and polluters buy. Carbon credits gives the smoke-spewing, carbon dioxide burping nightmares of production, an excuse to continue to pollute and ravage—lipstick on the imported pig, so to speak.

I’ve done the carbon footprint calculation a few times or more, often when I’m planning a plane trip. Sometimes I plug in numbers I pull out of my all-natural fibre hat like today, I plopped in an upcoming round trip to Vancouver with a couple of overnight stays inland, included the round trip from Picton to Pearson and didn’t forget about the overnight stay in Toronto, coming and going. The carbon calculator suggested my payment should be just over 80 bucks. And, no. I didn’t remit. The thing is, I’m not going to send a cheque or use Paypal to buy into a project to make me feel good about flying halfway across the country to visit my family. Nah, if someone really wanted me to reduce my carbon footprint they’d show me a way to get to B.C. (in a timely fashion because that’s what I’m used to) without blowing a ton of carbon dioxide out of my tailpipe—perhaps making the four-day roadtrip in a competitively priced solar car with stays in some kind of “eco lodge” along the way.

It stands to reason—my kind of reasoning— the answer shouldn’t be the buying and selling of credits and “carry on” as usual. The answer should be a worldwide promise to reduce emissions, conserve energy and reduce waste, and to do so in a timely fashion. The incentive shouldn’t be to allow the continuation of abuse, but to encourage change. We should all feel guilty about our emission excesses. This program doesn’t encourage us to change our lives and, at 80 bucks, it would be cheaper for me to buy the credit than to find a more “sustainable” way to travel. Of course, not paying the 80 bucks is a pretty good deal, too.

Come on Government of Canada. Get off the political water-wasting pot and get onto the composting toilet. Give us a really good reason to change our ways and I’m not talking about switching out our light bulbs and caulking the holes in our lives. If it’s an incentive program, then make it a real, honest-to-goodness incentive. Give us a reason to insulate, conserve, compost, recycle and reuse. Crack down on the big polluters. The race shouldn’t be to squeeze the last drop of oil out of the earth, it should be to find a viable alternative to ravaging, raping and looting. Put the brakes on big polluters buying their way out of hell and nip the carbon offset buying and trading in the bud. Take a deep breath and make us and them clean up the dirty acts.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca