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The summary says it all really. The petrol station has an extra pump which hasthe same fuel in it but charges you a few pence more to fund the planting of trees to offset your CO2 production.
<Rough calculations with dodgy assumptions>Assuming that a litre of petrol weighs 1kg (it's less) and that
generates 1kg of CO2 (I think it's less) and that a tree consumes 20kg of CO2 per year (it's slightly more for most trees) and costs $2 or 1pound to plant (cost taken from a website).
So, adding 5pence / 10cents per litre would offset the CO2 in 1 year and then be a bonus for the next 40 or so years. For a more conservative goal, 1pence for 5-year breakeven or 1cent for 10-year breakeven. </rcwda>
Ideally, the government would cover at least half of this or give you a tax break as fuel is heavily taxed.
kinda baked
https://www.shellsm...rt/about/Legal.html
Shell offer "pluspoints" on fuel purchases that allow you to buy into a carbon offset scheme [TheLightsAreOnBut, Jun 05 2007]
High and mid-latitude forests contribute to climate change
http://www.llnl.gov...06/NR-06-12-02.html
Only planting trees in the tropics and subtropics makes sense [django, Jun 05 2007]
Carbon offsets 'harm environment'
http://news.bbc.co....olitics/6378471.stm
Carbon offsets as they currently exist are hip, but scams. The public is being "seriously misled" by companies peddling carbon offset schemes. [django, Jun 05 2007]
Ethiopian tree-planting
http://news.bbc.co..../africa/6725073.stm
This would be an example of a good place to plant, provided that the tree has time to grow before being cut for firewood. [pertinax, Jun 06 2007]
[link]
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I'm not sure that carbon offsetting can ever be that simple, though... (neutral for now) |
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Burning 1 kg of petrol (approximately C8H18) with oxygen produces 3.08 kg of CO2. |
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//Ideally, the government would cover at least half of this or give you a tax break as fuel is heavily taxed//
In order to fund a subsidy, the government taxes you on something else. I hate subsidies. I'd rather pay for what I consume, and let everyone else pay for what they consume. |
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Pay some more, and the government will use this extra money to plant trees? Where will these trees be planted? Where is this otherwise unused land that will magically become available for new trees? |
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Mmm, problematic idea. Some trees (forests) contribute to climate change by emitting GHGs and reducing albedo, while others don't. So it is crucial to tell your clients where the trees will be planted. |
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Forests in temperate and cool climates (Europe, America, Canada) have a positive balance, so it wouldn't be a good idea to plant more of them. Forests and trees in the tropics and the subtropics have a negative balance, so only if you plant them there will you make a difference. |
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Most current (quasi-commercial) and hip carbon offsetting schemes ('plant a tree to become carbon neutral') are total scams and should be made illegal. They're based on fantasy, not on science. They harm the environment and make climate change worse. Being green is not that easy. It requires sound research. Not trends and fashion. |
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Why not reduce petrol use instead? |
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[Freefall] Thanks for the amount, so that would mean the price would be 3 pence per litre for a 5-year break-even. |
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Fuel is heavily taxed so the government would only have to lessen the tax slightly as an incentive. Compared to Kyoto and other measures, it's a bargain. |
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The government will not be planting the trees, the petroleum company will. |
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[django] Trees in temperate climates are only worse when there is snow on the ground, but still, I agree that the tropics are a better place to put trees. There are enormous amounts of space for trees all over the world. Ideally, they'd be planted on the edge of a desert region and gradually move in to the desert, but obviously this involves more than just the cost of planting the tree as they need to be watered. Australia seems to be the world leader in this kind of thing, they have a mission to plant 2 billion trees, and they are all native species rather than the fast-growing pines favoured in northern Europe. |
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[nuclear hobo] Petrol usage should be reduced aswell, not instead. |
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[Treon] If the trees were planted in developing countries, the workers could come from there and recieve direct financial benefit. They could possibly also use productive trees such as fruit, date, nut. |
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Again with the deserts! What do you people have against deserts? |
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How about planting all these trees on top of giant suburban houses? And in mall parking lots? How about a tree growing out of every Hummer? |
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[Galbinus_Caeli] planting trees on our roofs would make it impossible to paint them white, which would be more efficient in fighting global warming!! Or it would make it impossible to put solar heating tubes on them, equally efficient. |
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There is land enough in the tropics and the subtropics to plant forests. |
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Surely, [Galbinus_Caeli], though some particular desert habitats may be under threat, desert in general is something the world has too much of, not too little of? |
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By desert, I mean a large area with:
very low bio-mass
very little fresh water. |
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Call me anthropocentric, but the more desert we have, the less of the other, habitable land there will be, and the greater the likely of genocidal Malthusian wars being fought over that habitable land (for a given human population level, etc.) |
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Also, even if we rise above anthropocentricity for a moment, deserts surely don't contribute a huge amount to bio-diversity, (a bit, granted), just because they don't support much bio of any kind. |
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There's probably a good reason to not completely cover all of the world's deserts with trees, but at the moment, the amount of desert is increasing. China in particular has a big problem with a desert moving into a city and actually covering people's houses. |
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Also, they've been cutting down trees in Brazil at a rate of an acre per minute (or whatever it is) since I was at school, so we have a serious amount of work to do before we get back to where we were 15 years ago. |
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I would opt for an extra pump that tacked a on few extra cents to launch a smear campaign against Al Gore, as he is the real source of global warming. |
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Isn't this idea really backwards though?
About carbon offsets, it's a statistical
matter... you cause carbon, you sequest
carbon, done. But this is culturally
backwards. You want people to think
green but you do something that
encourages them to drive more? I think
that this is a brilliant example of
greenwashing. If it's not happening
right now, it's on the drawing boards of
big oil. |
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And Al Gore IS the source of global
warming. I personally saw him in the
arctic melting ice with a humangous
gasoline torch! |
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I heard he'd bought the plans to 'Icarus' and 'goldeneye' and was forcing Q to point them at glaciers. |
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He has of course made one crucial error, and that was to explain the consequences of his diabolical plan to his unsuspecting victims. |
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forget trees! v/v cyanobacteria whip the pants off of trees. Dig a pond in the tropics. You could also put the money towards exposing mountain ranges so that the weathering reactions precipitate more CO2 out of the atm. |
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