Justifying Bad Behaviour
One morning I walked on the fresh snow with a gas cylinder in my arms, containing 6kg of CO2. I took it across a pristine ice field of the Jakobshavn fiord, home to one of Greenland’s largest and most active glaciers, losing 20 million tons of ice every day.
I carried it until I found a wonderful place, overlooking a strip of dark frozen water in which majestic white icebergs were silently drifting out to the open sea. The sky was pale grey and cerulean with a yellow glow just behind the skyline, making the icebergs stand out in their spectacular ephemerality.
I thought to myself: this is perfect!
I walked to the top of a small hill, I laid the cylinder down, got on my knees and opened the valve. The CO2 came out violently, freezing the air around the nozzle and producing an unpleasant whistle…
ppppsssssssssssiiiiiiiiiisssssss…
When I lowered the cylinder towards the ground, the snow blew off under the jet pressure, as if to symbolise the melting of the Arctic ice cap because of the direct effect of human greenhouse gas emissions.
When the cylinder was finally empty and I discharged its entire CO2 content, I reflected on my premeditated irresponsible act. It was actually not a harmful intervention at all. You see, I had previously offset the emissions generated by this CO2 release through an online Gold Standard Carbon Offsetting scheme.
This made my action Carbon Neutral.
This is great stuff… basically people can go about consciously polluting the world, wasting energy, abusing natural resources and generating large amounts of harmful emissions without feeling guilty at all. People, as well as organisations, can simply pay a small amount to compensate for their ‘bad’ behaviour and become Carbon Neutral!
Do they really think this is good?
Personally, I think this is lazy and inexcusable.
A lot has to be done before we can revert to Carbon Offsetting as an effective mechanism to reduce Carbon emissions in the fight against Climate Change. First significant changes in societal behaviour are necessary to reduce our environmental impact, encompassing the way we live, travel, eat, produce and consume.
The cost of Carbon offsetting is too low to drive change.
Urgent change is needed and must come from within us.
Francesca Galeazzi
