It's all about money honey. The fact is there's no solution other than wanting less. We can't consume our way out of over consumption. Schemes like carbon offsets are just another self-serving flim flam. People will believe any story, no matter how ridiculous, if it ends with them getting to have the stuff they want without paying the real price, something for nothing, a free lunch. It's the oldest con going.Greenwashing is simply an evasive arguement designed to allow people to deny the fact that all consumption, all our stuff, has endless levels of energy consumption embedded in it. Carbon credits, for instance, are purchased by well intentioned folks to offset their guilt when they fly away on holiday. These credits might be in the form of planting trees or some other good sounding project. But when examined closely it becomes obvious that the land being planted was once in a natural state, forest-grassland-etc. This original ecology did sequester carbon by the work of the living soil's mircoorganisms. Then human's 'harvested' it. This activity and the energy to build the machines used and the energy to build the industrial infrastructure to build those machines and the energy to build that level of stuff and to build the next level of stuff etc. is one part. Then comes the GMO trees and the petrochemical fertilizers and the machines-infrastructure-energy embedded in that part of the flim flam. On and on it goes, what built the jet plane itself? Roads-mines-industry-oil-etc. What built them?
Carbon credits, like re-cycling, bio-degradable plastics and millons of other schemes are false hope. False hope is devastating. It keeps us engaged in activities and beliefs that make us feel as if we are getting somewhere, when really, we're not. On every level it's all about money. With every economic interaction someone makes a 'profit'. Profit is the illusion that all the embedded energy doesn't count.
We can't consume our way out of over consumption, there's no solution other than wanting less.
