Okay, this week I admit I’ve been a bit introspective pondering the English language, cemeteries and heroes, so time for a change of pace. I just had a week’s holiday and for once decided to stay at home rather than schlepping overseas. This resulted in time to read and contemplate, hence the posts of the last few days.

So…..today’s post is something pretty interesting to me and anyone interested in global warming-related corporate social responsibility issues. GreenMachines.net has just launched the internet’s first green corporate governance network - a social network with the mission of helping to turn climate-related corporate decision-making into a public process so that the technological and economic power of business corporations is focused on the fight against global warming.

There are four online discussion areas on the network:

• The Whistle: looks at whether particular corporations are violating laws designed to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Whistleblower protection is provided by Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 549 U.S. __ (2007), in which the US Supreme Court gives the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the tailpipes of new motor vehicles - meaning that the United States Supreme Court has found that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” within the meaning of the Clean Air Act and the Court’s reasoning applies equally to other greenhouse gases. So anyone who thinks a company is violating the Clean Air Act by unlawfully emitting greenhouse gases can report the violation on the network.
• The Long View: an area for discussing carbon footprint-reducing investments that corporations can make to develop or implement carbon dioxide (”CO2″) capture and/or sequestration technologies.
• Value-Added: here the network can share information about the steps a company can take to develop or implement CO2 capturing or sequestering technologies or find information on how to publish a Corporate Sustainability Report.
• Deconstruction Zone: an area to discuss and highlight the accuracy of a company’s Corporate Environmental Responsibility Reports or other green PR.

All four forums are moderated and anyone can join. Under New Posts, I found a whole lot of stuff on court cases involving non-compliant companies; companies that are seen as having the greenest tech brands; what specific companies like Wells Fargo and Chevron are doing around sustainability; and a link to measuring and managing corporate carbon footprints.

Quite timely really given the recent article in The Economist. US economist, Robert Reich’s new book, Supercapitalism, denounces CSR as a dangerous diversion that is undermining democracy. Reich has apparently had a Damascene conversion and following many years of preaching the CSR gospel, now believes that companies cannot be socially responsible and that CSR activitists need to focus on getting Governments to solve social problems. He debunks many CSR arguments and maintains that socially responsible companies are not necessarily more profitable and that many companies are using CSR as a propaganda tool to fool the public into thinking that problems are being addressed.

I suspect a good cat fight will erupt over this book - check out the overview of the book in The Economist article.

What’s the connection between carbon offsets and snake oil salemen? Well, the smart people at EasyJet have figured this one out pretty quickly. They’ve discovered that the carbon offset market is riddled with ‘snake oil salesman’ who care little for the environment but who care a darn lot about how much money they can get out of airline passengers wanting to pay penance for air travel. In an earlier post, I investigated for myself the carbon offset business and discovered that there is no regulation for carbon credits, which can be bought for varying amounts per tonne – a glittering fact that appeals to snake oil salesmen in pursuit of the almighty profit.

EasyJet was apparently ‘shocked” by the excessive amounts carbon offsetters were asking for their service and in a bold move has decided to launch its own carbon offset business by acquiring credits in UN-accredited schemes on the open market and selling them back to customers. EasyJet’s communication director said that carbon offsetters wanted 25-30% out of every English pound paid by green-minded passengers. This creaming off the top is for administration costs.

Of course, newer jets emit less carbon emissions so a really smart idea would be for the European Union to get rid of all older planes and an even smarter idea would be regulation of the embryonic carbon offsetting market.

Following an earlier post, I came across this report during my research into carbon trading. The report is published by the Corner House, a not-for-profit UK organisation aimed at supporting democratic and community movements for environmental and social justice.

The report is entitled Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power and covers what I talked about in my earlier post about carbon colonialism. A number of case studies are included, which demonstrate the lessons not learnt.

Having hopped off a plane this week from Hong Kong to Sydney, I wondered what carbon emissions my Syd-HK-Syd return trip might have released into the atmosphere. Burning jet fuel and the vapour trails produced by planes contributes to carbon emissions swirling in the atmosphere. We’ve all heard of carbon offsetting, where you can buy credits to fund projects, like planting forests or supporting wind farms, to counteract the harm caused by air travel or other environmentally offending practices.

I decided to use some commercial online calculators to check out the carbon count of my flight. First up, I used Offsetters (Canada) and the carbon count for a distance of 14,748 km return trip was 4.16 tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere. To offset this, I would need to pay CDN $78.44. Next, I tried the Carbon Neutral Company’s calculator. For my direct return flight, the distance was 14,758km, which would produce 1.6 tonnes of CO_2. I was given a number of projects to select from to offset the carbon emissions: Futures Portfolio at £14.91; International Communities Portfolio for £13.17; or One World Portfolio for £11.36. The three listed projects help to foster new technologies, plant trees or focus on community projects in developing countries, such as a solar lighting project in India, which would replace kerosene lamps with clean lighting that reduces CO_2.

Finally, I visited Australia’s OriginEnergy Go Green calculator and discovered that carbon emissions from my trip were equivalent to emissions created by 1.4 cars in one year! air travel emissions totalled 5.77 tonnes. To offset 100% of these emissions it would cost AU$92.31.

My direct return flight seemed to produce a mixed range of greenhouse gas emissions - 1.6, 4.16 and 5.77 tonnes. Intriguing! why the difference? The Carbon Neutral Company pointed out that long haul flights are more fuel efficient than short haul ones; and that different aircraft emit different emissions. They stick to the DEFRA (UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) emissions factors to calculate the CO₂ a flight creates. Offsetters base their calculations on a report into the climate impacts of aviation by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University.

And then there’s the varying range of costs involved in purchasing carbon credits - from around AUD$28.00 to $93.00. A bit of sleuth work uncovered this interesting report entitled Voluntary Offsets for Air Travel Carbon Emissions from the Tufts Climate Initiative. Chart 5 in the report shows a table of Price Per Tonne of Carbon Offset with a wide range of price difference per tonne. It seems to depend on where commercial offsetters purchase their carbon credits. If on the international market through institutions, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, then it proves to be more expensive.

So how do you know which offsetter to purchase from; what exactly happens to your money and whether the environment actually benefits from you purchasing carbon credits? how do you know that the forest you’ve invested in hasn’t gone up in smoke or withered in a drought? how long are planted forests for example maintained and cared for? and there’s the issue of whether carbon offsetting really is just a way of making us all feel a little less guilty whilst still carrying on with our polluting practices. So more sleuth work was necessary!

Over at Another Green World blog, it seems that the head office of the Carbon Neutral Company (UK) was the subject of a recent “occupation” by Derek Wall (green activist) who was protesting against what he sees as the ’smokescreen’ of carbon offsetting. He says “Many people are now questioning whether offsetting allows some of us in the richer, developed world to carry on with our massively polluting lifestyles, instead of lowering our own emissions”. In other words, business as usual.

So what’s the evidence when it comes to the effectiveness of carbon offsetting? Carbon Watch has released a report called “The Carbon Neutral Myth – Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins”, which likens carbon offsets to indulgences - avoid any time in Purgatory by expiating your sins. An interesting statistic I came across is that the voluntary offsets market will be worth EUR 450 million by 2010. Big money indeed. And it’s a concern that there is little or no regulation as yet of this industry so although you think you might be doing the right thing by purchasing carbon credits, in fact the offsetter may be “dodgy” and you end up buying hot air.

Carbon Watch’s report refers to offsetting as a “dead end tour” that does nothing to address the urgent need to change our patterns of consumption or transform society into a low carbon economy. Chapter 2 is a very interesting look at the history of the Carbon Neutral Company and how a number of tree planting ventures by various offsetters have failed, due to land degradation or planting of non-natives.

Digging a bit deeper, it seems The Carbon Neutral Company was originally known as Future Forests having been founded in 1996 by a music promoter and a musician (who was the drummer of the punk rock group The Clash). Such high profile beginnings and connections in the entertainment industry led to projects like Brad Pitt’s $10,000 donation to the company to plant a forest in Bhutan in his name to offset his glamorous Hollywood lifestyle.

There are two issues to keep in mind here - what is the actual science involved behind carbon offsetting and does the money actually make it into environmental projects? Tackling the last issue first, there is a difference between planting trees and obtaining carbon sequestration rights for trees that have been planted by other resources. One example in the report shows that an offsetter claimed they had planted trees in a forest in the UK, when in fact they had paid for the carbon sequestration rights. The upshot is for this particular project, £16,140 were profits for the company while the forest only received £860. This was from money gained to offset a rock band’s world tour.

A quick scan of carbon credit agreements also shows that a forest is maintained for a finite period of time - seems 70 to 99 years is the average. This takes us back to the science - a popular notion is that trees absorb CO₂ thereby neutralising whatever emissions took place. But the carbon cycle is an incredibly complex process split between the active and inert phases. Scientists do not know with any accuracy exactly how much CO₂ trees absorb or how long they store the CO₂ for.

In fact, trees emit methane - a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere - and may be responsible for 10-30% of the total methane count. If the tree or forest goes up in smoke or decays, CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. And as the planet heats up, trees will undoubtedly die off and emit methane further contributing to the cook-up.

And how much money does it actually take to maintain a forest for up to 99 years? there’s a lot of things to take into account - access to and cost of water; ongoing health of the land or soil the trees are planted in; licensing etc. Does the fine print in tree project agreements stipulate the actual costs of maintaining and caring for a forest? is there mention of people being driven off their lands or biodiversity of the region being disrupted? we are dabbling in future rights without addressing the real issue of our ongoing tragic love affair with fossil fuels.

The Kyoto Protocol refers to tree planting projects as “carbon sinks” and I wondered if this is simply a new form of colonialism ie world resources usually in developing countries being used to maintain the privileged lifestyles of the rich or allow big business to go on pillaging the environment. The Carbon Shop report refers to a colonial mindset when it comes to people being evicted off their land to make way for tree plantations.

There are of course alternatives to tree or forest planting, which I’ll explore in a future post. But I think the crucial issues are: before purchasing carbon credits, investigate that the offsetter is credible; look into what happens with the money and the projects; think about funding an energy project instead.

And what of my international travel? I have made a conscious effort to cut down on my whizzing around the world and will continue to do so. I no longer travel by air domestically as videoconferencing or that old stand-by, the telephone, can accomplish wonders :)-