Dot Earth Blog: Action Plans on CO2 that Go Beyond 'Woe is Me, Shame on You'

I recently received a note from Tim Whitley, the founder and head of the nonprofit group Carbon Offsets to Alleviate Poverty, which I think merits posting as a ?Your Dot? contribution because it takes a step beyond the ?woe is me, shame on you? rhetoric that has long been favored by people seeking to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Here?s Whitley?s piece, with a postscript from me:

In recent weeks, Richard Muller converted from climate skepticism, Bill McKibben terrified us with new math, and James Hansen told us that climate change is already here and worse than we thought.? Appearing in The New York Times, The Rolling Stone, and The Washington Post, respectively, these informative and important pieces undoubtedly reached millions.? But one piece far fewer people likely saw was David Robert?s piece on Grist ?Why climate change doesn?t spark moral outrage, and how it could.?

Roberts? piece summarizes a recent Nature Climate Change paper ?Climate change and moral judgment.? Similar to Lynne Cherry?s recent Your Dot post here on Dot Earth, it lays out the reasons why recent pieces by McKibben, Muller, and Hansen, combined with the immense visibility of where those pieces appeared, are unintentionally functioning as a giant climate change disempowerment machine.

Luckily, Roberts? piece also summarizes ways to address this problem, including using emotional carrots instead of sticks and expanding the number of reasons to take action.? On the ?emotional carrots? side, there is a myriad of ways to do your part and get empowered:? conserve energy, fly less, get a home energy audit, and upgrade your appliances, home insulation, and vehicles.? You can advocate for a cleaner electricity grid, responsible natural gas production, and an end to fossil fuel subsidies by supporting leading nonprofit groups like 350.org.

You can also meaningfully address the carbon dioxide emissions that your daily activities unavoidably generate through the life changing, accountable and transparent income streams for the poorest communities on Earth.

Whitley is modest enough not to suggest his own group, but I will do that for him. To get an idea of how the group?s projects work, explore the details of the effort in Sofala, Mozambique, where farmers get a small payment for the carbon-absorbing value of adding a tree crop, cashews, to their plantings. Here?s a YouTube video by the group:

Longtime readers of my work know I?ve been skeptical of the merits of many carbon offset projects (start with my 2007 article, ?Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green??)

But I?m a fan of voluntary offset projects of this sort where the added value of a payment goes far beyond avoided greenhouse gases. My 2008 piece on a Wildlife Conservation Society carbon and forests project in Madagascar included this explanation from that group of the logic in such efforts: ?high-quality emissions reductions delivering multiple benefits ? climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable economic development.?

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c4a113c20ee0c9e3aa62bf36869805bb

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