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Carbon offsetting is a well-intentioned movement to compensate for the environmental damage of our daily lives. But instead it allows us to just keep on making that damage.

In the middle ages, the Roman Catholic Church’s ability to grant ‘indulgences’—a pardon for sins in exchange for good works and prayers —had predictably given way to pardons in exchange for donations to the church. The bigger the sin, the bigger the required donation to put things right with God. What a perfect closed-loop system, I’ve always thought, to allow sinners to keep on sinning and the church to raise money and profile.

500 years since Martin Luther protested such abuses, indulgences are all the rage again. This time around, sins are environmental, and the pardoning body that soothes our conscience is the non-profit world. Do what you like, then pay a penalty afterward and it’s OK—you’ve cared for the earth without having to change your lifestyle. Actually, it’s more than OK—you are celebrated, held up as someone who is doing something good for the environment.

Thanks to this non-profit enviro-indulgence scheme, we can now:

• fly where we want, as long as we pay the carbon-offsetting tax (or better yet, get one of the “carbon neutral airlines” to include it in the price and do it for you)
• buy what we want, as long as we fill our blue recycling boxes with the excessive packaging
• drive as much as we want, as long as we buy one of the “fuel-efficient SUVs” that the government gives rebate cheques for, and/or use bio-diesel (that little problem of farmers in less-developed countries going hungry is just an unfortunate side-effect that even Obama and McCain don’t seem to notice)

If You’re Gonna Do It, Do It Right

Carbon offsetting is undeniably a good thing, and has it’s place. We all unavoidably contribute to climate change with necessary travel and consumption and even enjoyment, and compensating for that by contributing to a worthy non-profits is a genuinely good thing to do. As always, the donations can be and are being abused, but the David Suzuki Foundation is an excellent resource to learn more about how to do it effectively.

How About Not Making a Mess In The First Place?

But before cleaning up the messes we make through careful investments in non-profits, we have an obligation to try to avoid or minimize the mess in the first place. It’s the idea that offsetting grants us impunity that I object to. The noblesse notion that those of us who can afford to make non-profit donations are free from any obligation to lessen our global impact in the first place.

Double Dipping

As an example of abuse of the indulgence system, check out the sweet double-indulgence deal I got last year. After a year of excessive flight travel, I went to a non-profit silent auction and gave them my $650 indulgence fee. My soul felt better knowing that the air I had polluted while flying would now be cleaned by the trees I was paying someone to replant, plus my wife and I also got a year’s worth of restaurant coupons and photography sessions.

I was going end with a tongue-in-cheek suggestion of an enviro-indulgence points club, but our credit union beat me to it. With my “Enviro” credit card, each purchase generates a fractional donation (a “tithe”, we might say) for community and environmental groups. So every time I buy South American fruit, I am simultaneously contributing funds to groups like Farm Folk City Folk to promote local food production. I can have my mango and eat it too, knowing that I’m only 99% part of the problem and a celebrated 1% of the solution.

I still love silent auctions and my credit union, and even the occasional mango at a party. My resolution is to keep my priorities straight, and maintain the following chronological order:

1. Reduce my levels of consumption and waste as much as possible, even if it challenges my comfort and convenience levels, then
2. Invest in green technologies that reduce the impact of the consumption I do need, then
3. Last – still important, but last – invest wisely in non-profits (the carbon-offset calculation plus some of the money saved from steps 1 & 2) to offset the impact of those activities.

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Photo courtesy of Kossy@FINEDAYS