[AGL] carbon neutral 2

[Gerry]

I dunno, Twisty. Sounds to me like a scam to capitalize on the guilt of
energy abusers. And like they say, no one knows if new trees have much of an
impact on the pollution. I guess those wealthy enough to have a portfolio of
investments and wise enough to know the planet is going to hell need some
conscience clearing scam to make them feel better. I do not find this
approach appealing. Buying off guilt. Not the way to save the planet. We
don't need more wind farms, we need discipline.

Trees are cheap. Takes a big one about 50 years to grow large and 5 minutes
to burn to the ground in a forest fire. Droughts claim many of them every
year (including 4 from my orchard this year). In the western mountains
various bugs and blights are taking many thousand each year. Don't even
think about Brazil, Alaska/Canada, and Indonesia where the largest
concentrations of trees are being slaughtered daily. The point is, much
easier to take a tree than to grow one. Don't forget that once upon a time
most of this country was forest. How you gonna restore it? Plant trees in
all the places where they once grew? Good luck. We will never live to see
the kinds of tree concentrations common on the planet in olden days.

My defense strategy calls for using trees for fuel in winter. Not so radical
since I am surrounded by Mongolian Elms which shed limbs faster than I can
gather and burn them. I enjoy the gathering and cutting and stacking, keeps
me active in winter. These big trees have roots which have tapped the
underground aquifer which is not so far underground. I could not harvest all
the growth they produce in a year. All around me on the hillsides of the
desert are junipers, invaders who moved in here like the cedars in Texas
(they look and smell alike). I figure if push came to shove our small
community could stay warm off the junipers for a long time--if we could keep
the city dwellers away from them. Maybe we could market juniper and elm
futures to the carbon tag buyers...
G






----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Edwards" <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
To: "ghetto 2" <ghetto2 at lists.whathelps.com>
Cc: "ghetto survivors" <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 6:08 AM
Subject: [AGL] carbon neutral 2


> this is one of the emails bounced yesterday. mebbe it'll get through
> today.           twisty
>
>
> Some choices can be overwhelming. Two months after moving, Ms. Chafe is
> still buying conventional power. "I'm trying to understand exactly
> where my money is going before I make a decision," she said.
>
> It can be even harder to sort through the many groups vying to shrink
> your carbon footprint. Clif Bar, a company in Berkeley, Calif., that
> sells energy bars, also sells $2 "Cool Tags" at concerts and sports
> events to offset the cost of the drive; the money goes to NativeEnergy
> for wind farms. Sites like Carbonfund.org and  GreenTagsUSA.org have
> carbon calculators to estimate pollution and offer products to offset
> it. Ford Motor has a partnership with TerraPass to encourage drivers to
> buy carbon offsets.
>
> So many players have entered this market that consumers can shop
> around. Ms. Pashby, the human resources manager in Baltimore who offset
> her 14-ton carbon footprint for $57 through the Conservation Fund,
> would have spent $200 through GreenTagsUSA.org, a Web site sponsored by
> the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, a nonprofit group that
> supports renewable energy, or $77 through Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit
> organization that promotes ways to reduce or offset carbon emissions.
>
> Although these vendors all seem to sell the same thing, the approaches
> can vary. Some, like the Conservation Fund, plant trees to absorb
> carbon. Others, like TerraPass and NativeEnergy, try to avoid pollution
> in the first place by backing certain energy projects through green
> tags and other methods. Some groups, like Carbonfund.org, try to do
> both.
>
> Ms. Pashby chose the Conservation Fund because "trees are better
> looking than wind farms." But it's not clear which option is better for
> the planet.
>
>   "The challenge for consumers is that there is no uniformly accepted
> standard for what constitutes a valid reduction in global warming
> pollution," said Daniel Lashof, science director of the climate center
> of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The exceptions, he added, are
> green tags carrying the Green-e certification, a seal of approval
> issued by the Center for Resource Solutions, a nonprofit group based in
> San Francisco that verifies that clean-power companies sell the amount
> of power they say they do.
>
> That label, however, is limited to green tags, and doesn't apply to
> companies that sell a mix of projects. Those involving reforestation
> can be especially difficult to verify.
>
> "There's not a whole lot of great tracking for building forests in
> Costa Rica," said Brendan Bell, associate Washington representative of
> the Sierra Club's global warming and energy issues program. "How do you
> know the same acre isn't being sold to a bunch of people?"
>
> Some marketers are trying to improve accountability. The Conservation
> Fund sends certificates to supporters, telling them when and where
> their trees were planted. TerraPass has transactions verified by the
> Center for Resource Solutions. And the Climate Neutral Network, an
> independent nonprofit group in Portland, Ore., has developed a "Climate
> Cool" certification for carbon offset products, though it has not been
> widely adopted. The Center for Resource Solutions is also developing an
> offset certification similar to Green-e that it hopes to introduce this
> summer.
>
> "We're trying to develop standards so we can make this transparent and
> not have scandals that destroy the market," said Lars Kvale, an analyst
> at the Center for Resource Solutions.
>
> ACCOUNTABILITY may be especially important in the for-profit arena.
> NativeEnergy, TerraPass and others profit by buying and then reselling
> green tags and other investments.
>
> "I was very surprised to hear later that TerraPass is a for-profit
> company," Dr. Waters, the Sacramento doctor, said. "That may very well
> have affected my decision to buy. I like to think that every nickel of
> what I'm doing goes to support the cause."
>
> TerraPass says that it tries to inform all customers about its
> for-profit status, and that its business model has allowed it to
> attract capital, grow faster and thus better serve the environment.
>
> For now, at least, that is good enough for Dr. Waters. "It makes me
> feel like I'm doing something, and it feels very personal," he said.
> "I'd like to think that when it's time to renew, I'll comparison shop
> and find the group that's most efficient."
>
>