Carbon Planet

July 3, 2005 2:23 AM

Carbon Planet - aims to reduce Climate Change by empowering individuals to erase their CO2 footprint by purchasing carbon credits. The site enables users to subscribe based on the greenhouse gas usage in their country, with the subscription buying carbon credits in a forestry scheme in Australia. Would you consider subscribing?
posted by gusset (26 comments total)

I would consider subscribing.

I would also love to see a subscription-matching model that was sponsored by government or industry.

For every X actions taken to actually reduce my own carbon footprint, the sponsor would purchase/sponser a carbon sink resource matching in kind. Say, I committed to bicycle commuting or clean transport, or energy reduction.

Or even a system where my carbon footprint was outright purchasable for use in other areas.
posted by loquacious at 3:02 AM on July 3, 2005

SCAM! (possibly...)

The New South Wales Greenhouse Abatement Certificate (NGAC) certification process is comprehensive. It includes Kyoto Protocol measures, but goes beyond these. In summary the NGAC certification process ensures the following:

That each NGAC represents one tonne of carbon dioxide stored for at least 100 years.
That the trees have been planted since 1990.
That the trees weren't planted on old growth forest cleared land (the land must have been clear prior to 1990).
That should the tree from which your carbon credit came come to any harm within 100 years of your purchase eg. Fire, disease, logging; that carbon credit will be replaced immediately from another source.

In other words, they're not creating a new carbon sink as a result of your subscription. They're pointing to an already existing tree that's already doing the carbon sinking, and saying it's yours. Frankly, If you don't live in New South Wales, this is probably not a good deal for you.

Also on the page they say the trees were chosen because of a sequestration program, not a reforestation program. If I read that correctly, the forest is sequestered from logging and development lands. But then, so are most backyards.
posted by bugmuncher at 5:44 AM on July 3, 2005

Have they solicited the Duggars?
posted by davy at 8:00 AM on July 3, 2005

Bugmuncher, the guy across across the street recently cut down a big old oak in his front yard and now has a big stack of firewood instead. It all adds up.
posted by davy at 8:01 AM on July 3, 2005

Not a scam, but probably not what bugmuncher's looking to buy. Carbon Planet's simply offering at a retail level what Forests NSW is selling wholesale. See here: Forest NSW. The pertinent passage is here:

“The inclusion of a return for carbon sequestration may mean that investment in plantations that were previously less attractive financially, such as those grown for sawlogs over longer rotations or on lower productivity sites, will become much more attractive.

The trees are destined for the sawmill - they're plantation grown expressly for that purpose. What they aim to do here is put an additional incentive on the tree plantations to keep people from converting those lands to more financially productive uses (like ranches.)

Which is all well and good, but it doesn't have the environmental sexiness of being able to designate a specific stand of trees and knowing that YOUR contributions enable it to sink YOUR carbon output, and knowing that it otherwise wouldn't be doing so.
posted by swell at 8:10 AM on July 3, 2005

Please see TerraPass. As seen in this months Wired.

I plan to subscribe my vehicle. Along with switching to wind power option from my local utility, and using a wood pellet stove for heat, it has cut my net carbon usage down to very little and frankly it costs very little extra (actually the wood pellets cost less than oil heat by 3 times so I have a net savings overall).
posted by stbalbach at 8:47 AM on July 3, 2005

The trees are destined for the sawmill - they're plantation grown expressly for that purpose. What they aim to do here is put an additional incentive on the tree plantations to keep people from converting those lands to more financially productive uses (like ranches.)

Thanks, swell, for pointing that out. I stand corrected.

You're very right; this is not what I am looking to buy. I'd rather plant trees myself and be satisfied that I'm doing what I can to reduce my carbon footprint locally rather than halfway across the world.

(Though, if there were such a program for Amazonian rain forests, I can think of a lot of Americans who would sign up, because of their emotional attachment to biodiversity in that region.)
posted by bugmuncher at 9:01 AM on July 3, 2005

The trees are destined for the sawmill - they're plantation grown expressly for that purpose. What they aim to do here is put an additional incentive on the tree plantations to keep people from converting those lands to more financially productive uses (like ranches.)

Thanks, swell, for pointing that out. I stand corrected.

You're very right; this is not what I am looking to buy. I'd rather plant trees myself and be satisfied that I'm doing what I can to reduce my carbon footprint locally rather than halfway across the world.

(Though, if there were such a program for Amazonian rain forests, I can think of a lot of Americans who would sign up, because of their emotional attachment to biodiversity in that region.)
posted by bugmuncher at 9:04 AM on July 3, 2005

forgive the double. freaking JRun...
posted by bugmuncher at 9:07 AM on July 3, 2005

Why would I want Australia to get my carbon credit benefits? Why wouldn't I just buy some trees and plant them in my backyard?

Yep, what Bugmuncher said. Its a nice idea but its just as easy to act locally and produce some change.
posted by fenriq at 9:13 AM on July 3, 2005

"What they aim to do here is put an additional incentive on the tree plantations to keep people from converting those lands to more financially productive uses (like ranches.)"

in other words they want protection money?
posted by muppetboy at 10:03 AM on July 3, 2005

Say, did you know that Kyoto is a SHAM? This sounds like a better idea.
posted by ParisParamus at 10:31 AM on July 3, 2005

Paris: Do you even read articles before you post the kneejerk dittohead response? This is precisely the market mechanism that Kyoto aims to make work. *If* you took this and expanded it to global scale, you'd have Kyoto.

The question is whether this *can* expand to a global scale, and how much stress this would put on the industrialized economies.
posted by swell at 11:47 AM on July 3, 2005

PP saying that Kyoto is a sham? I'm shocked, SHOCKED! well, not that shocked.

This is a very silly plan because it uses the "average" baseline alone. There's no consideration for whether or not you own an operate a vehicle (or how many you own/operate), or for planting/keeping trees, recycling, or really any other consideration.
posted by clevershark at 11:54 AM on July 3, 2005

I have a better plan. By not cleaning out my navel for several years, I now have an oxygen-generating plant growing out of it that I can now use instead of an athsma inhaler. I also smuggle kudzu seeds and plant them in the cracks in the sidewalk - in a few years, the San Fernando Valley will be a rainforest. And Spielberg is on the right track in "War of the Worlds" [spoiler alert]: using people as fertilizer is probably the most eco-friendly sci-fi concept since Soylent Green. I'm sure all these methods will go far in achieving the standards of the ParisParamus Protocol.

But seriously, I like the idea, wish it could be more 'global' and more 'local' and wonder out loud how much more sequestering a tree would cost in California than in Australia.
posted by wendell at 1:00 PM on July 3, 2005

wendell sucks his own navel!
posted by Balisong at 1:39 PM on July 3, 2005

Kyoto is a Sham because none of the signatory nations will ever comply with it; and everyone can criticize the US because Washington was the only major country to walk away from it.

On the other hand, any market mechanism that reduces emissions--actually does not BS PR--is a good one. And such is actually the Bush Administration's approach to such.
posted by ParisParamus at 2:57 PM on July 3, 2005

Got a link to that, Paris?
posted by Balisong at 4:42 PM on July 3, 2005

There's absolutely no logic behind preferring to plant a tree locally rather than in New South Wales.

Paris, there were only two countris that refused to sign the only greenhouse abatement deal around - the US and Australia. You'll note that NSW have just ignored their Federal Government and gone ahead with a Kyoto-compliant scheme.

Which reminds me: there is a risk in that scheme - if Australia never signs Kyoto, those trees aren't ever going to be compliant. This is unlikely however, there's a strong public feeling that we should sign, and all other political parties have committed to doing so.
posted by wilful at 4:45 PM on July 3, 2005

Try Professor Samuelson in the Washington Post:



Europe is the citadel of hypocrisy. Considering Europeans' contempt for the United States and George Bush for not embracing the Kyoto Protocol, you'd expect that they would have made major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions -- the purpose of Kyoto. Well, not exactly. From 1990 (Kyoto's base year for measuring changes) to 2002, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, increased 16.4 percent, reports the International Energy Agency. The U.S. increase was 16.7 percent, and most of Europe hasn't done much better.


Here are some IEA estimates of the increases: France, 6.9 percent; Italy, 8.3 percent; Greece, 28.2 percent; Ireland, 40.3 percent; the Netherlands, 13.2 percent; Portugal, 59 percent; Spain, 46.9 percent. It's true that Germany (down 13.3 percent) and Britain (a 5.5 percent decline) have made big reductions. But their cuts had nothing to do with Kyoto. After reunification in 1990, Germany closed many inefficient coal-fired plants in eastern Germany; that was a huge one-time saving. In Britain, the government had earlier decided to shift electric utilities from coal (high CO2 emissions) to plentiful natural gas (lower CO2 emissions).
posted by ParisParamus at 5:11 PM on July 3, 2005

Portugal increased %60 in 10 years? whatever.

When you put these numbers in a per-capita basis on actual pounds produced per person, they look a lot different.
posted by stbalbach at 6:18 PM on July 3, 2005

This sounds like a scam to me. If not, why do the organisations listed as "partners" not have links back to this site? Can you imagine a bank being involved with this and then not publicising it?

Our electrical supplier in Queensland has a scheme where we can choose to purchase "green electricity" at a small premium, which is a very very small start, but a start nonetheless.
posted by dg at 6:30 PM on July 3, 2005

I'm trying to find out what Robert J. Samuelson is a professor of, and can't find anything. press bio from Newsweek.

Back to a serious note, here's the president's plan:

Mr Bush made it clear that he regarded new technology as the key to halting global warming. And he indicated that he believed the Prime Minister was ready to "move beyond the Kyoto agenda" and focus on techniques such as placing carbon dioxide in underground wells rather than on a regime of limits on emissions.

Brilliant! See, the problem with the carbon dioxide is that it's ... in the SKY! So, we take it out of the sky, and we put it ... in the GROUND!
posted by swell at 11:41 PM on July 3, 2005

In Britain, the government had earlier decided to shift electric utilities from coal (high CO2 emissions) to plentiful natural gas (lower CO2 emissions).

This is what happens when you trust the Washington Post rather than going to the IEA direct. This statement is demonstrably incorrect. The UK Government abrogated responsibility for the make-up of the electricity supply system in the UK to the market. This has been the case since 1990 when the UK electricity supply industry was sold into private hands (the gas sector was sold in 1986). The UK Government downgraded Energy from its own department with a cabinet position to a single minister with the department od trade and industry in 1992 as a result of this free market policy. The movement to switch from coal to gas was thus taken by the market (the so-called 'dash-for-gas'). However, this change from coal to gas does not account for all of the emission reductions in the UK portfolio, the reduction in levels of available capacity as security of supply has been reduced in importance in comparison with economic outputs has meant less spinning reserve and greater efficiency of the system overall.
posted by biffa at 3:41 AM on July 4, 2005

thanks for your comments - to cover a couple of things:

“The inclusion of a return for carbon sequestration may mean that investment in plantations that were previously less attractive financially, such as those grown for sawlogs over longer rotations or on lower productivity sites, will become much more attractive.
The trees are destined for the sawmill - they're plantation grown expressly for that purpose. What they aim to do here is put an additional incentive on the tree plantations to keep people from converting those lands to more financially productive uses (like ranches.)

you'll see on the nsw govt. forests about page that they own 2 million hectares of native forest, plus an expanding estate of hardwood + softwood forests. perhaps it could be read that the government is buying out farmers, but i'd doubt it - the prices for farmland in nsw is astronomical, thanks to urban folk seachanging.
forests nsw seem to be trying to make a buck out of being environmentally sound here - yeah, they're growing trees for sawlogs, but i'd much prefer plantation than native forests, and if offering carbon credits means that the whole operation is more sustainable for them, then it's genius - if it works.

Frankly, If you don't live in New South Wales, this is probably not a good deal for you.

as they point out, Forests NSW is the world’s first independently audited and scheme-approved supplier of forest sequestration credits within a greenhouse gas abatement scheme. i don't know of any others, and as an aussie who grew up in nsw with a plantation near the olds place, it's very much a "in my backyard" type scheme. the carbon emissions of the average australian per year is hefty too @ 28 tonnes per year - perhaps there's something else similar in the US - and it's great to see alternatives like terrapass.

This sounds like a scam to me. If not, why do the organisations listed as "partners" not have links back to this site? Can you imagine a bank being involved with this and then not publicising it?

carbonplanet has been live as a site for about a month. as such as new business, one would imagine that before you hand your money over, you want proof that they're the real thing. checking a couple of the other sites - none of them list their partners, quite possibly because they don't need/want to. i can imagine a bank not publicising it very much - because some of their main customers (hello chemical companies) are responsible for the very mess that carbon credits are about cleaning up. greenpeace.org.au have no mention of their bank either - possibly for the same reason.
posted by gusset at 5:07 AM on July 4, 2005

For anyone happening on this later who is interested in the concept:
Take a moment to check out

MyClimate
which allows you to make contributions for climate neutral travel based on the distance of your airline trips.

Founded in Switzerland and now a non-profit with offices in several countries, anyone can participate. MyClimate has been around for maybe four years now, has had some major press off and on, and is certainly putting the money in the right places.
posted by whatzit at 9:55 PM on July 18, 2005