Are carbon credits the new indulgence?
carbon sequestering in Stanley Park
There’s no getting around it, the richer one is – the bigger the carbon footprint. Wealth inextricably leads to consumption, which in turn increases one’s ecological impact on the planet. The rich live in bigger houses, drive bigger cars, consume more goods and travel more frequently than those less wealthy. A recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives entitled “Size Matters” demonstrates that the top 10% income earners ecological footprint is 66% higher than the national average (p.5, Size matters). Air travel is a major factor contributing to the higher carbon footprint.
If one travels by air, one is going to emit a lot of CO2s. Four people traveling by plane from Vancouver to Toronto produces 2.8 tonnes of CO2s to be emitted into the atmosphereZeroFoot Print. How does this amount of pollution compare to other modes of transportation? The average car in Canada drives about 16,000 km per year. This would cause 4.04 tonnes of CO2s emissions in biosphere annually. To take one round trip to Toronto is equivalent to the average car use for a year.
We live in a big country and the need to travel is real whether for personal or business reasons. So how are we going to travel in a responsible and ecologically sustainable way? Part of the solution will be to try and reduce the amount of CO2 we produce in our everyday life as a sort of personal carbon bank that one can draw from. For example, if one never drives a car in their life because they are able to choose to live closer to work and walk to work that is reducing about 4 tonnes of Green House Gas (ghg) from being dumped into the environment compared to the average car driver.
This raises a problematic trend in our economy, cultural and ecosystem. As a society we are perilously moving closer to the class system that permits some folks to practice a form of “boutique” environmentalism. There is a class of folks who able to eat locally grown organic food, live in eco-green apartments, live close enough to walk to work, all which cost a lot. Cities are becoming less affordable and increasingly only the very rich will be able to live in the city centre. In Vancouver we are witnessing a trend of folks leaving the centre of the city to move to other regions in Metro Vancouver to find affordable housing and commute back to the city for work.
As the rich are the ones with big eco footprint they will also be the ones who will be able to afford to pay for the carbon offsets for this footprint. Is this the model to develop a sustainable future? Is this like the indulgence that the Church used to sell folks for forgiveness of their sins?
While there are some troubling aspects of the concept of carbon offset and with the class system that is developing around the market mechanism, there may be a role for them in models of participating in a sustainable future. Reducing how many ghg one emits into the atmosphere is one part of the equation to the solution, the other part will be increasing the carrying capacity of the environment. We need to increase the capacity of the earth to transform the CO2 in the atmosphere. Planting more trees on the plant is going to be part of the solution. According to Zerofoot Print, a carbon offset company that sells carbon offsets for Air Canada flights, 1 tree sequesters 5 tonnes of CO2 over an 80-year period.
There could be some real benefits of developing a carbon offset market if one could ensure that carbon reductions were real, permanent and would not have happened otherwise. It would not be a real carbon reduction for reforestation in the BC forest industry to sell carbon offsets for the trees that they replant, because this is something that they would have done anyways and also one could also argue if they had not cut the trees in the first place, the need to replant it would not be necessary. But to pay a cattle producer to replant the land with trees would be real and permanent reduction in CO2 emitted in the biosphere and would also increase the carrying capacity of the earth.
Imagine if the Vancouver Park Board (VPB) reduced the number of parking spots in its parks and greened these areas by planting trees each year. Parking spots are a form of “induced traffic”, which is a notion in road pricing theory that basically states, “ if you build it they will come”. If we build roads, cars will drive on them and every cars needs about 4 parking spots. Part of the process of reducing the car use is by putting a real price to the infrastructure that cars use. Parking is a vital link in the car’s transportation infrastructure. Given that parking is important to overall revenues the VPB needs to consider if it is possible to reduce parking by a certain amount and also raise rates to compensate for the revenue loss?
Another possibility, in conjunction with the reduction and increase of parking fees is to create a VPB carbon credit that folks could buy every time they travel. Parking spots could be removed and greened by planted trees and CO2 would be reduced, because every reduction in a parking spot would also be a reduction of a trip to a park by a car and the replanting would also increase the carrying capacity of the earth. The City of Vancouver could do this as well. Imagine if every available space in Vancouver was planted and we could create a new revenue stream too.