Cyclists: Let the Backlash Begin (or Not)
Grilled Cheese Coming to South Park
Lincecum Busted for Pot
Muni Ticket Agent Arrested After Assaulting Juvenile
So Much For That Plastic Bag Ban
Oh wow. We need to get in on this racket. See, San Francisco International Airport plans on installing carbon-offset kiosks, so guilt-ridden travelers can donate to saving the Earth and stuff. It works like this: Travelers enter their flight info at the green kiosk, which figures out how many puppies and kittens will die as a result from the carbon dioxide emitted from their flight. A cost for offsetting your environment-crippling flight plans will then be deducted from your credit card, then sent to one of several carbon-reducing projects. While this sounds like an inspired idea, it could have corruption written all over it.
SFO to Install Questionable Carbon-Offset Kiosks
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebookComments (27) [rss]
Post a comment (Comment Policy)
Tips
Contribute
Latest Tip:
Elihu Hernandez is running for Board of Supervisors in District 6 and he is having his campaign kick
[more]
are those companies hiring? Sounds like a good opportunity to make a bunch of money and then quit in a year.
Brock, why do you hate the environment? You prolly drive down the street and throw your candy wrappers out your car window while saying things like, "ha ha!"
I don't know if Brock "hates" the environment; it sounds like he is wary of the same thing I am - a charlatan who attracts customers with tricks or jokes. Selling carbon offsets is the latest in a long line of schemes to extract money through guilt. The green kiosk may be only one step away from the people who constantly call me claiming to be raising funds for the police, cancer, firemen, tiger memorials, whatever, through nonexistent charities.
And um, how exactly is this "offset" going to work? Are they going to pay someone else NOT to fly?!
Seriously, the machine should just take peoples name and CC number and return the following messsages:
> For $20 you can take a cab back home and call your work/friends/family instead
> For $50 you can BART your ass home and think about how silly you are
> For $100 you can walk your dumbfuck globetrotting ass home and plant a tree on the way
> For $250 you can run through the terminal yelling you'll never catch me aliiiiiive and ground all the flights for the day saving literally tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere
Xenu, I think offsets kill a little child, or something environmentally sound like that. but seriously, i don't know. will find out, though.
Offsets work by calculating your carbon footprint (i.e., how much carbon you produce by flying from Point A to Point B) and then determining how much of an offset is needed (e.g., how many trees would it take to absorb that much carbon?) to balance out the carbon produced to a zero level. You then buy an offset, which represents an investment into a project that nullifies your carbon footprint. This program is a joint venture between SFO and the City and a company called 3Degrees. The offsets they offer include methane capture projects, sustainable energy production (e.g. wind farms, solar arrays, etc.), and sustainable forestry.
Is it a scam? Depends on the company managing the offsets. 3Degrees is a reputable firm, investing in worthwhile projects. I fly at least 30 times a year and I generally buy offsets. I hardly see the like extra three American dollars a flight it costs me as being a waste of money when it's going to fund sustainable energy development.
Jnice, that was brilliant. Ha!
TAYM, 30 times a year?! sounds trying.
people love the chance to continue to live life as they are now, and "feel good" about "being good" with little trinkets like these. It's the same as people who want to lose weight but insist on eating the same food they're eating now, instead of switching to fruits, vegetables and a balanced diet that's more nutritious. Or the person who insists on driving a 15 mpg SUV, and tweaks their tire pressure to get an extra mile per gallon, thinking they're going to save a few pennies.
You can't drive 3 blocks to the store for smokes and buy a carbon offset and thinking you're helping the Earth. Sure you'll "feel good" but in the short term, we'll all be choking on the smog your car generated on the way to buy whatever.
Count me among the skeptics. This sounds like nothing more than a scam to separate yuppie liberal enviro-guilters from their money. It's not so easy as paying money. Want to help the environment? Quit fucking driving so much. Live closer to your job, quit fucking breeding.
But no one wants to hear that. Swiping a card is so much easier.
a sucker is born every minute
"carbon offset kiosk" sounds like a great euphemism for the crapper
the concept of "carbon offset" is as logical as "clean coal" or not calculating and preparing for a balloon mortgage contract and sucking the taxpayer teet dry to offset your ignorance.
How about simply not doing activities that require an offset? Gee, now there's a concept.
Stop gambling with the environment like it's a credit card you can never hope to pay down. Fixing the problem by declaring bankruptcy is an option that means death to us all.
Knock it off.
@travin: indeed
I think "King of the Hill" made a good point when Strickland Propane was to "go green" and bought into the idea of Carbon Offsets and of course, when Mr. Strickland is involved, with Dale, you know it's going to be shenanigans...
Greg, yeah. Thinking about it more after getting that off my chest, I do see some utility in making the concepts of carbon emissions more accessible and understandable to a broader range of people. Though a scam, this sort of does provide that in some small way. Now only if industry will devise a method of education and compliance that doesn't rely on the same methods that isn't just a money suck, we'd be golden.
I'm just worried that resorting to bargaining with our lives is, well, just replicating centuries of religious practices and none too progressive. There's some irony.
CEO of 3Degrees, you magnificent bastard, I salute you. Corporate offices in three US cities, and you still manage to make money off of climate change guilt.
Oh my God, the whining here is ridiculous. If y'all don't like the idea of purchasing carbon offsets, fine, DON'T PURCHASE THEM! However, at the very least, know a little something about what you're talking about before you dismiss it with that typical sfist hipper than thou, left over 1990's cynicism. I mean, really, what are any of YOU doing to impact climate change? Hah?!
do you want me to list them here or should i drive my hummer over and tell you in person?
I need one of these in my bedroom
TAYM, your post-ironic, trendy, green attitude is, as always, very suspicious. but if you think an airport kiosk will save the Earth in any way whatsoever, have at it.
me, i plan on ending homophobia and racism at Hot Topic.
carbon offsets = 21st Century Catholic indulgences
Isn't the real danger the fact that these kind of things, may cause the green mov't to be mocked? More than it is currently?
And then you know the backlash, etc....
I guess you guys just want to say they are useless so you feel better for not buying them.
mushmouth, some of us cannot afford them.
Consumers receive the false notion that they are helping to stem global warming. But this is idea is not merely a little white lie, or some benign snake oil. Rather, it is a poisonous illusion. As long as we think that we can compensate for our consumption with a little extra cash, we come no closer to -- and in fact prevent -- the kinds of change needed to fend off global warming. As Kevin Anderson, a scientist with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research put it, “Offsetting is a dangerous delaying technique because it helps us avoid tackling the task [of dealing with climate change]... It helps us sleep well at night when we shouldn’t sleep well at night” (as quoted in Smith 2007).
@spysea: The notion that offsets in and of themselves are a "poisonous illusion" is absurd and I suspect that the quote you attribute to Kevin Anderson is being applied out of context, at least in regards to this particular conversation.
Carbon offsets, purchased by, say, major polluters, as a way to continue business as usual, are certainly no solution to the problem of global climate change. However, as demonstrated here, most people aren't familiar with the concept in the first place and even when introduced to it, are highly skeptical. Accordingly, the notion that carbon offsets allow anyone to sleep well at night is ridiculous. Regardless, we're not even talking about carbon offsets for major polluters, so relevance?
Here, we're talking about allowing people to buy carbon offsets for their time spent flying. As someone who already gave up his car, uses his bike to commute, generally relies upon locally grown, and sustainable food sources, and has chosen not to breed, the primary source of carbon for which I'm responsible is the several times a month I have to go through the torture of boarding a commercial aircraft and flying elsewhere as a requirement of my job. If I want to spend a few extra American dollars on each flight buying offsets - money that will go to planting some trees or developing a windfarm in a developing country - I fail to see what the big deal is. It is, after all, better than doing nothing. Which, it would appear, is what the majority of people on this thread would propose to do because whatever solution they're willing to embrace must be absolute and final or it's apparently not worth pursuing at all.
So Brock, when you pay for your $600 ticket round trip to JFK, you can't find another $6.00, to help fund a landfill methane cap that wouldn't otherwise be funded? Dude if your so fraking broke maybe you shouldn't be flying.