Carbon offsetting.

[AtomKraft]

Hands up anyone dim enough to have ever been conned out of a few quid to 'offset' their use of CO2?

Sorry, I meant 'right on' enough.....

[Capetonian]

Nope, however it's not entirely a con, if only because it increase awareness of emissions.

I haven't seen it as an 'option' when buying air travel for quite a while now, unless I just automatically ignore it without it registering.

[Pontius Navigator]

I think my Sat Nav tells me how much CO2, litre of fuel and cost my journey took. I admit to marvelling how far I have travelled on half a litre and its 65p cost. I don't recall registering and CO2 used.

We soon. become desensitized.

Carbon offset is a con no matter how you do it.

OK goody two shoes, you want to plant an offset tree. I have some land, I want an apple tree. Please send me £50 and I will drive to the nursery and get one.

I will transfer your £50 by giving £45 to the nursery and keep the £5 for my costs. The nursery man will pocket the £45, go get a root stock and graft another tree for next year.

Carbon offset is the con; carbon reduction is the goal.

BA reducing its carbon emissions below target is brilliant but hang on a minute. That affects their bottom line. Now if they sell that carbon surplus to the Chinese, it reduces the Chinese manufacturers carbon emissions by transferring the excess to the BA deficit and pay BA money which improves their bottom line.

Everybody happy.

[Capetonian]

It's all very well to talk about 'targets' and 'below target' but who sets those targets and what do they really mean?

[Pontius Navigator]

Quite.

How much CO2 do you produce? Well, I eat one cabbage per week, this had sequestered one Kg of CO2, etc etc. I produce solid waste, this off-gasses a greenhouse gas. This is converted into CO2 equivalent (just like your wages are translated into CO2).

Now the population is growing by . . . By the year . . . they will be consuming . . . cabbages and producing . . .

Let's set a target reduction of X%.

The present target is farm animals. 20 years ago there were more pigs in Netherlands than people. They produced more pig ***** than the Dutch farmers could use. They tried selling it to India but the Indians have more pig ***** than they need, and 30% of the population was Muslim anyway. I think they sold it to Thailand until . . .

So they want us to become vegetarians, or better, vegans. But the EU, in its wisdom has banned vegetarian sausages as a sausage contains meat therefore it can't be vegetarian. Similarly a burger contains meat (allegedly) so you can't have veggie burgers.

I think milk is OK as coconuts got there first.

Thought, can a vegan baby suck a tit?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Maybe the Dutch farmers could convince the EU to switch from using bullsh!t to pigsh!t. There's an almost limitless market there!