Can’t stop emitting CO2? Make up for it in cash!
Companies has announced that they will be collecting funds and redstributing them to organizations that help to find ways to reduce fossil fuel emissions. These companies provide conversions so that you can calculate how much money you owe based on how much CO2 you have emitted. This method of life that tries to equal out the greenhouse gases is called “carbon neutral,” and it’s getting mixed reviews.
People who are against this plan claim that people will get into the habit of thinking that they don’t need to reduce thier use of CO2, and can just pay it off. It wouldn’t come off as a serious problem if you could just pay for what you used. They also say that these “offsetting” companies involved with carbon neutral are giving off the impression to our people and our government that no futher steps need to be made concerning greenhouse gases. Instead, opponents say that the government should try on working to eliminate fossil fuels altogther. Heh. Fat chance of that.
These offsetting companies provide online calculators to compute how much money you should donate determined by what you just did. For example, a calculation showed that by throwing a wedding with 150 people, you would be suggested to owe $230. Companies are also going to participate, as a British cab company calculated that they would owe $195,000 annually. These companies are becoming popular in Europe, and will hopefully become popular in the United States.
Image Credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Hackney_carriage.jpg
On this issue, I can see where the opponents are coming from. However, I think that if we made sure to educate and promulgate environmental issues better to citizens, they would see why this program was created. Many people would just see this as a way for them to feel less guilty, and would not think of reducing CO2 emissions if they could afford to pay for it. I think that these people need to be educated on methods to reduce CO2 while compensating for the CO2 that they just can’t live without.
Source for article: http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12145
abbyr said,
February 2, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I am kind of in the middle on whether people should pay for it. I think that it is a good idea because some people are stingy and wouldn’t want to pay. At the same time though, some people are going to think that it isn’t a serious issue because they can just buy their way out of it.
Camille said,
February 3, 2007 at 3:47 am
Pay off your C02 emissions??? Are you serious!?!? That’s like saying do all the damage you want and give me money so I can fix it. Like that would ever happen! I mean, I’m all for it if someone wants to donate to that cause, but this idea is just as realistic as people planting 1,000 trees each year to offset the pollution from their cars.
mary alice acton said,
February 3, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I agree with Camille. This is no way to fix this problem. We should not be concerned about making people pay for the harmful decisions they make towards our environment, but rather we should be concerned with telling people just how harmful there actions are and then tell them to quit ruining our Earth. It might be nice for these companies to get a little extra cash, however, it would be even nicer to keep our Earth clean and not have to worry about diseases and other things resulting from global warming that could potentially harm humans.
mrmc said,
February 3, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Pollution trading allowances have been around for a while now. They have been very successful. There is no reason to think that this wouldn’t work–the goal of course is NOT to change people, but rather to reduce CO2 and lessen the impacts of global warming.