Excerpt from Sustainable Business, 14 September 2009
'The controversial practice of carbon offsetting, via which U.S. polluters send money overseas in exchange for promised pollution reductions elsewhere, came under fire last week in a new report published by Friends of the Earth...
www.foe.org/sites/default/files/A_Dangerous_Distraction_US.pdf
“It is suicide to base our future on offsets. Offsets provide the illusion of taking action to stop global warming when in fact they often allow emissions to rise,” said Michael Despines of Friends of the Earth, one of the authors of the report. “People need to realize how dangerous offsets can be--they provide a false sense of security because they often do not deliver as promised.”...
“A cap-and-trade system contaminated by offsets can open the door wide to what’s known as ‘subprime carbon,’” said Michelle Chan, author of Subprime Carbon, a report released by Friends of the Earth this spring. “When offset credits don’t deliver promised greenhouse gas reductions, they can collapse in financial value, harming broader financial markets. We need to reduce actual emissions, not create a new source of financial risk.”'
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