Carbon offsetting: a licence for business as usual

An offer to plant trees to offset carbon emissions isn’t a solution – it’s a licence to continue with business as usual. Planting trees is called offsetting (carbon).  Offsetting’s real power is to provide not a climate solution, but a social licence to continue with business as usual.

Carbon offsets sum up all that is wrong with our approach to tourism and the climate crisis. They perpetuate the idea this crisis does not prevent unlimited growth with old and highly polluting technology; shifts the moral responsibility for carbon reduction to someone else; and finally there is the small matter that they don't work. From 2021 the EU has stopped allowing offsets to be counted towards emissions reductions targets.

Offsets cannot act quickly enough; only reductions can: Given the huge growth in aviation in recent years, the continued growth predicted in future, and the limited time period available for reversing the climate crisis, many campaigners and climate scientists believe that the focus should be on reducing the number of flights, not paying for CO2 savings elsewhere which could take years to take effect and have little guarantee of working. In the case of forest planting for example, trees do not reach their average carbon storage capacity until they are between 15 and 35 years old – far too long given the urgency of the climate catastrophe we are faced with. We do not have the luxury of time if we are to keep global heating below 1.5C. Carbon offsets can therefore never radically reduce emissions at the speed required.

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