FTC Takes On Carbon Offsets

Are you getting enough bang for your buck when you buy carbon offsets? The United States Federal Trade Commission is exploring that very thing in a series of hearings on green marketing, according to the New York Times story excerpted below:
Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet.
But where exactly is that money going?
The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, raised the question Tuesday in its first hearing in a series on green marketing, this one focusing on carbon offsets. As more companies use offset programs to create an environmental halo over their products, the commission said it was growing increasingly concerned that some green marketing assertions were not substantiated. Environmentalists have a word for such misleading advertising: “greenwashing.”
With the rapid growth of green programs like carbon offsets, “there’s a heightened potential for deception,” said Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the commission.
The F.T.C. has not updated its environmental advertising guidelines, known as the Green Guides, since 1998. Back then, the agency did not create definitions for phrases that are common now — like renewable energy, carbon offsets and sustainability.
For now, it is soliciting comments on how to update its guidelines and is gathering information about how carbon-offset programs work.
Consumers seem to be confronted with green-sounding offers at every turn. Volkswagen told buyers last year that it would offset their first year of driving by planting in what it called the VW Forest in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley (the price starts at $18).
Dell lets visitors to its site fill their shopping carts with carbon offsets for their printers, computer monitors and even for themselves (the last at a cost of $99 a year).
Continental Airlines lets travelers track the carbon impact of their itineraries.
General Electric and Bank of America will translate credit card rewards points into offsets.
Most suppliers of carbon offsets say that the cost of planting a tree is roughly $5, and the tree must live for at least 100 years to fully compensate for the emissions in question. By comparison, an offset sold by Dell for three years’ use of a notebook computer costs $2.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Vatican Goes Green

Though red is still the pope's color, the Vatican is going green. Vatican City has announced plans to become the world's first carbon-neutral state, according to the website environmentalleader.com:

The Vatican plans to become the first entirely carbon neutral sovereign state, and it has chosen KlimaFa ecorestoration offsets to achieve this goal. KlimaFa has created a new Vatican Climate Forest in Europe that will initially offset all of the Vatican’s CO2 emissions for this year.
Planktos/KlimaFa has further committed to work with the Vatican and the Pontifical Council of Culture to develop methods to calculate the CO2 emissions of individual Catholic churches and offer ecorestoration options to turn their carbon footprints green.
“The Holy See’s increasingly creative environmental leadership is both insightful and profound,” said Planktos CEO and KlimaFa managing director, Russ George. “Not only is the Vatican steadily reducing its carbon footprint with energy efficiency and solar power, its choice of new mixed growth forests to offset the balance of its emissions shows a deep commitment to planetary stewardship as well. It eloquently makes the point that ecorestoration is a fitting climate change solution for a culture of life.”
The new Vatican Climate Forest will be created in Hungary’s Bukk National Park under the auspices of the KlimaFa Climate Parks program. Its dimensions will be determined by the Vatican’s 2007 energy use and the success of its current emission reduction efforts.
In June, the Vatican announced that the roof of the Paul VI , 6,300-seat auditorium will be redone next year, with its cement panels replaced with photovoltaic cells.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm

Live Earth Pledge

Are you ready to take the Live Earth Pledge? Here is what it says:

I PLEDGE:
To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;
To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"
To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;
To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;
To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;
To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,
To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

If you are ready to take this pledge, go to http://www.algore.com/pledge/

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

Live Earth to Reach 2 Billion

Get ready to rock, world. Live Earth is coming tomorrow to a stadium, TV or house party near you. Read about it in the Kansas City Star (article below.)

Live Earth is ambitious by any standard: eight concerts featuring the biggest names in music, playing for a 24-hour period across the globe, all for the cause of global warming.
But like its template — 2006’s Live 8, the global concert devoted to poverty in Africa — the mission of Live Earth is somewhat amorphous. Its aim is to “trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.”
Whatever Live Earth’s accomplishment Saturday, it will be difficult to measure. Former Vice President Al Gore, who partnered with Kevin Wall in founding Live Earth, believes the world needs to rise up as one giant vox populi to influence “a new political reality.”
“The tipping point in the political system will come when the majority of the people are armed with enough knowledge about the crisis and its solutions that they make this cause their own,” Gore said. “Then, you will see the entire political system shift dramatically.”
Wall, an Emmy-winning concert producer who produced Live 8, hopes Live Earth will change attitudes about global warming and spark a larger movement.
“This concert is not the solution,” Wall says. “Maybe we can make the noise, maybe we can be the town crier.”
Live Earth will send proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit organization chaired by Gore. Tickets for the U.S. concert range from $83 to $348.
Wall was originally inspired to put on Live Earth after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Oscar-winning documentary on Gore’s global-warming slideshow.
“The question I kept asking myself is, ‘What can I do?’ ” Wall says.
Concerts are scheduled for Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; London; Johannesburg, South Africa; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai, China; Tokyo; Sydney, Australia; and Hamburg, Germany. A band of scientists also will perform in Antarctica, stretching Live Earth across seven continents.
More than 150 artists will perform, including Madonna, the Police, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Alicia Keys. Sixty short films and 30 public service announcements have been produced, which will be broadcast between performances.
Also planned are more than 6,000 parties in 119 countries, ranging from home viewings to museum festivals. The concerts will be broadcast on TV and the Internet.
Part of the thrust of Live Earth is to communicate what consumers can do to minimize their impact on the environment.
“The problem with it is that it’s a very complicated issue,” Wall says. “When you think about yourself recycling a piece of paper, how does that connect to an iceberg in the North Pole?”
Wall and Gore also have taken measures to maintain the concert’s green integrity by enlisting the support of the U.S. Green Building Council and John Picard, a former member of President Clinton’s Green White House task force. Live Earth is intended to be an eco-friendly event with power supplied from renewable energy sources and ground travel from hybrid or high-efficiency vehicles where possible.
“This is going to be the greenest event of its kind, ever,” Gore says. “The carbon offsets and the innovative practices that are being used to make this a green event, I think will set the standard for years to come.”

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

Greening "Live Earth"

The "Live Earth" concerts are trying to be the greenest music festival in history, according to Reuters.

Live Earth producers want the world to watch what they do. "We want to make the concerts themselves part of the solution," Live Earth's Yusef Robb says. "What we're working very hard to do is something that has never been done before: establish a new green event standard that Live Earth will not only follow but hopefully future live events will follow as well."
The concerts will be built "from the ground up to be as green as possible," Robb says. "If there is a choice between a dirty lightbulb or a greener lightbulb to light the stage, we're working to find the technology that can generate the least amount of carbon. If there's a choice between two cups at a concessions stand, we want to identify the best one that not only makes a beer taste good but can also be recycled and didn't use a lot of carbon to produce in the first place."
Obviously, there will be some carbon that Live Earth will not be able to "design out" of the process, Robb says. "That's the reality of life in the 21st century. So we'll offset any remaining emissions."
Enter environmental adviser John Rego. Working primarily with corporate "greening" consultant Brand Neutral, as well as independent nonprofits the Climate Group and consultants Seven-Star and Meeting Strategies Worldwide, Rego oversees the Live Earth Global Green Team.
"One of the key objectives of our work is to gather best practices and create a 'greener' recipe for the industry going forward," Rego says. "The three main topics we focus on are energy, waste and transport, which are your three main carbon emitters worldwide, but also in a live event."
The diversity of the venues in which Live Earth will be staged is not only a challenge but a benefit, Rego says. "There's not one model that can be used across all of them," he says. "We have stadiums that are 30-plus years old and stadiums that are brand-new and just renovated, so obviously different challenges exist there."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

Rockin' in the Green World

Rock bands are increasingly greening their tours, with the help of organizations like Reverb, a consulting firm, according to the New York Times.

The organization, based in Portland, Me., was founded in 2004 by Adam Gardner, a guitarist for the indie rock band Guster, and his wife, Lauren Sullivan, who worked for the Rainforest Action Network. Reverb charges acts a fee for its consulting services and is also sponsored by green companies and other fund-raisers.

A prominent for-profit organization in the field is MusicMatters, a marketing company in Minneapolis. It works with environment-minded clients, produces events and consults with artists like the Dave Matthews Band and Jack Johnson on a wide range of green touring practices, down to the use of nonpetroleum-based cosmetics onstage.
“We like to consider ourselves an eco-SWAT team,” said Mr. Gardner, 33, explaining Reverb’s approach. Indeed, under its stern eye, promoters are shamed into ditching Styrofoam coffee cups from catering spreads backstage, and crew members are instructed to collect partially spent nine-volt batteries from musicians’ distortion boxes and wireless microphones.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Green Business

That's the topic of a special New York Times section. If you haven't become a registered user of the Times yet, this section is worth the time it takes for you to register. Topics covered include renewable energy on an industrial scale, carbon offsets sold at retail outlets, greening the food industry (how do you deal with the waste, an analysis of supposed green paradise Denmark and much, much more.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Carbon Offsets Harmful?

That's the contention of British environmentalists who testified before the Commons environmental audit committee, chaired by Tory Minister of Parliment Tim Yeo.
According to the BBC News,
Jutta Kill, of the Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN), was the most vehement opponent of the practice, arguing it probably did more harm than good.
It is very hard to convey to people that when they are buying an offset they are not actually neutralising their impact on the global environment.

Carbon offsetting was "an unbelievably inefficient way of reducing emissions," she argued, and its effects were impossible to verify.
In addition, "More than half" of the money given to companies selling carbon offsets went on research and administration costs, "benefiting not the climate but the burgeoning consultancy industry".
'Straightforward donations'
"We believe it is worse than nothing because it creates the illusion, or the impression, in the public that action is being taken, while we are not really addressing the task at hand, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Ms Kill told MPs.
People would be better off making "straightforward donations" to climate projects through established charities.
"This is a serious issue of misleading the public, if you are not telling people that what you are buying is something that is not very viable.
"And those that have set up this offset market are fully aware of this fact," she told the committee.
Guide: Carbon offsets
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Carbon Offsets Not All Created Equal

According to a report by Clean Air-Cool Planet, not all renewable energy credits (RECs) are worth the money. The report says the worst companies make it difficult for customers to establish whether what they do — planting trees, installing solar panels or making biofuels — would not have happened anyway.

Read the article in the Telegraph, which includes a list of best and worst companies.

Check out Clean Air-Cool Planet's Consumer's Guide to carbon offsets (PDF).

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.