Atlantica - 01.05.2007, Page 25

GOING
GREEN?
Debunking the myths about o setting
your carbon emissions.
Barely an hour goes by these days without the
buzzphrase ‘climate change’ making the head_
lines. Extreme weather, rising global temperatures
and even extinctions and epidemics are all blamed on
our addiction to fossil fuels.
But there’s hope.
Carbon offsetting basically means trying to
reduce the net carbon emissions released into the
atmosphere through proxies responsible for investing
in renewable energy. In other words, you give back
what you take. The most common way of doing
this is by planting trees. But the most common way
of making this happen is actually not to head out
yourself and start digging holes for your saplings
– but rather to pay somebody else to plant the trees
for you.
There are a growing number of companies all over
the world providing carbon offsetting services to the
general public and businesses alike. Many of them
operate their own forestry schemes, whereby they
plant and manage the trees to effect the greatest
sustained carbon dioxide uptake possible.
Unfortunately, good things are never quite
that simple. Carbon offsetting has its doubters in
the business community, and also in the environ_
mentalists’ camp. You see, trees simply aren’t a magic
cure for climate change. Their biggest drawback is
that all the carbon dioxide absorbed into their flesh
(through the process of photosynthesis) is released
back into the atmosphere after they die.
At best, that makes trees a global warming delay
rather than a cure. On the other hand, if old trees are
replaced with new ones, the process at least becomes
carbon neutral because the new trees reabsorb the
old trees’ carbon. To add to this, if the old trees are
burned for fuel, they might save on the burning of oil,
coal or gas – and that, of course, is a good thing.
But what if even the first generation of trees
planted for carbon offsetting actually exacerbated
global warming? Shockingly, that just might be the
case. Not only do trees absorb carbon dioxide, their
dark leaves also absorb and trap the sun’s heat,
thereby increasing global warming.
Scientists at California’s Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory have calculated that trees planted
in the tropics are able to grow quickly and that the
water evaporating from their leaves helps to create
clouds, thus cooling the earth. Therefore forestation
ILLUSTRATION BY LILJA GUNNARSDÓTTIR
on the fly
BY ALËX ELLIOTT