Carbon offsetting will threaten attempts to combat dangerous climate change, Friends of the Earth warned this week.
Climate change will be unavoidable if the UK, EU and USA pursue a policy to increase the use of carbon offsetting to meet their commitments according to the campaign group. In a new report ‘Dangerous Distraction’ Friends of the Earth (FOE) warns that carbon offsetting is ineffective and damaging.
The report, was released at the same time as the launch of ‘Friends of the Earth’s Demand Climate Change Campaign’. The objective of the Campaign is to lobby for a strong and fair global climate agreement at UN talks – being held in Bonn next week and also in Copenhagen in December. FOE say the report exposes carbon offsetting as a con which is failing to reduce, and in some cases is even increasing, carbon emissions.
FOE criticise the UK Government for promoting the increased use of offsetting at the UN climate talks, pointing to plans to carbon offset by buying up forests – which they believe will not stop deforestation but will cause significant social harm to the people that rely on them.
The green campaign group is urging people to join its Demand Climate Change campaign by signing an international petition to call for an end to policies pushing carbon offsetting and a commitment from rich countries to cut their carbon emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020 – through change within our home countries, not by buying offsets from abroad. Real change at home would mean the faster roll out of renewable energy technologies such as wind energy and more investment in currently struggling technologies such as wave and tidal power.
Andy Atkins, Executive Director at Friends of the Earth said:
“Western governments are cheating us all by plotting to expand carbon offsetting at the UN climate talks – which means avoiding real action through dodgy accounting instead of taking bold action to tackle the climate crisis.
“Carbon offsetting is doing nothing to combat climate change, is putting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people at risk and is entrenching inequality between rich and developing countries’ levels of emissions.
“And offsetting is cheating Britons out of the new jobs and industries which investing in green technologies at home would bring.
“Gordon Brown must push for rich countries to deliver on their historic responsibility to cut their emissions first and fast and pay up for their fair share of global costs to fight climate change.”
