Compensate CO2 in education not in trees
4 februari 2008
Again there is bad publicity about CO2 compensation. The Dutch quality newspaper Volkskrant (February 2, 2008) claims that it is fake. Companies in this business make false claims to beef up their portfolio. Last year there was also much debate about the effectiveness of CO2 compensation. The Financial Times referred to the “green gold rush”, with millions of euros being spent on emission rights with no visible benefit for the environment. The Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad queried the practice of planting trees to compensate CO2 emissions, quoting Barbara van der Hoek of the World Wide Fund for Nature as saying: “Compensating is obviously better than doing nothing: trees absorb CO2. But the actual effects of tree planting is often not clear.” Gerard Keijzers, professor of sustainable entrepreneurship at Nyenrode University in the Netherlands, is not enthusiastic about compensation either. “Planting trees is certainly a sympathetic thing to do and good for raising awareness, but that’s about all.”
We have to remain critical about the ineffective expenditure of billions “to do something good” against climate change. Planting trees is better than nothing, says the WWF, and it helps to raise awareness according to Keijzers. Not good enough I think. Best is to stop deforestation in rain forests; no other measure matches this. And moreover I would like to propose a form of compensation that delivers better results. Let’s start compensating CO2 emissions with investments in education in the poorest countries that stand to be the worst affected by global warming. In other words: schoolbooks instead of trees by way of compensation for a return flight to Athens. And schools instead of forests for a polluting factory. Education is widely known to be the best way of empowering people in developing countries to build a better future for themselves. That, to my mind, is far better than planting trees, no matter how well intended and sympathetic these initiatives may be. And in this way we can also establish a very direct link between global warming and poverty alleviation. So I call upon organisations like Plan Nederland and Unicef to seize this opportunity! People are more than willing to spend billions on CO2 compensation. Help them help others by showing that education is more beneficial than trees. With a few good photographs, schools can be made to look just as appealing and sympathetic as trees. There is a huge market out there! Let’s go for it!
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There are good, and certainly 'sympathetic' (...) aspects to this proposal. But a few remarks seem to be in place: 1) Education is very important, but has no direct effect on CO2-reduction. It is therefore virtually certain not to be accepted t