The Great Green Smokescreen

I just watched The Great Green Smokescreen. Here, reporter Tom Clarke investigated the effectiveness of offsetting both on an individual level and on a corporate big business level. He started by exploring the practice of planting trees and then moved on to examine the usefulness of companies which offer offsetting opportunities (they act as a middle man between the corporations and, e.g., the carbon neutral energy producers). Finally he tackled issues such as calculating one's carbon footprint and carbon labels on packets etc.. Though his conclusions weren't as decisive as I had hoped, the programme highlighted some of the main problems faced today by our lifestyle (without ever really articulating it). Offsetting seems to be the new form of confession.

As a corporation (or an individual) you simply pay your way to a good conscience and more importantly to a consumerist lifestyle without really forfeiting anything. First of all, there are questions over the way to calculate carbon emissions. So the money companies are forking out to offset their emissions is most probably not accurate at all. As one carbon offset trader put it, the price at which carbon offsets are sold needs to be reasonable enough for people to buy into this scheme.

Secondly, a lot of the carbon trading companies don't seem to need to sell carbon offsets, as they would be producing whatever they produce without that input anyway. These two facts are worrying enough...but there are more worrying issues to the way the issue of pollution is being handled.I repeat:Offsetting is the new form of confession. It doesn't address the fundamental problem of capitalism. We consume to our hearts content, and hope that will all be made good by paying for penance. It's a complete distraction from the real issue of using and abusing our planet, the people on it, and its resources. But capitalism has in many ways become untouchable. It also adapts to any new challenge. It has taken Green ideas and made them their own. Their answer? Offsetting.

What is really at stake here is capitalist production and capitalist consumption. Take the carbon offsetting trade. Companies such as Pepsico and British Airways can now happily claim that they are reducing carbon emissions. This is of course a complete fallacy: Even if the carbon trading scheme was fault free, they would still not be reducing carbon emissions, as they continue to do so. They are not reducing carbon emissions; they are merely paying penance, which in turn will make them more marketable to consumers. That's all. It's a ploy, as far as I can see. A horrible marketing ploy. Nothing to do with going Green. It's simply a way of making money.

It's also a way of making people revel in their guilt. By placing a disproportionate amount of culpability and responsibility of ordinary consumers, governments are in a way absolving big business from doing what hurts most: going Green. I mean think about it: How on earth can an airline company claim to be Green? It's utterly preposterous. Instead consumers are now meant to feel bad about flushing the loo, while Big Business continues to produce and produce, and market and market, in order to persuade consumers to consume and consume. The real problem is our consumerist, capitalist cycle of consumption. Until we really address that, schemes such as carbon offsetting will do little other than absolve the rich and endorse their consumerist lifestyle, while the poor are left further behind. Developing countries are told to do as they are told and not to do as they have been shown (by the capitalist forerunners). This is all very unacceptable.

I try to live as Green as possible, and not just since the neo-Green hype of the last few years. I don't drive; I try to buy local; I am aware of energy wastage. But I am also aware that this is a private choice (a bit like vegetarianism...I don't do it because I believe it somehow makes a difference). To change the way we consume, we need radical changes in the way we treat our culture of consumption. Yes, this would mean drastic changes; this would mean not having as much at our disposal; it would mean travel restrictions; but more importantly it would mean the end of Big Business. It would have to. At the same time there would be moral issues about how to solve this globally. Can we really ask developing countries to forfeit the luxury we enjoyed? It's a difficult questions, which from an ethical point of view would have to be answered with 'no'. From an environmental point of view it would have to be 'yes'. Perhaps the 'no' is slightly stronger, still. So there's the dichotomy. Where to go from here? It's the main issue facing the immediate future, and whatever the answer(s) to that may be, one thing is clear: The charades of offsetting, going carbon neutral, and going neo-Green have to be replaced by serious debates and concurrent action regarding our capitalist-consumerist culture. Big Business, beware!