Articles by Joseph Romm

A good reason we shouldn’t love trees, at least not in this case

Everybody loves trees. They are so popular as offsets they even make Wikipedia's definition:

When one is unable or unwilling to reduce one's own emissions, Carbon offset is the act of reducing ("offsetting") greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. A well-known example is the planting of trees to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from personal air travel.

But does planting trees reduce global warming? Not in most places on the earth. The Carnegie Institution's Ken Caldeira summarized the result of a major 2005 study (PDF) this way: "To plant forests to mitigate climate change outside of the tropics is a waste of time."

Why? Because forest canopies are relatively dark, compared to what they replace outside the tropics -- grass, croplands, or snowfields -- and so they absorb more of the sun's heating rays that fall on them. That negates the "carbon sink" benefit trees have soaking up carbon dioxide. Worse, the study found that planting a large number of trees in high latitudes would "probably have a net warming effect on the Earth's climate." Ouch!

Taking ’em to the mat

The first rule of Carbon Offsets is, you do not talk about Carbon Offsets.

Just kidding. This isn't Fight Club, but I do aim to pick a fight with those overhyping offsets.

If a smart company like Google can seriously think it can go green by burning coal and then buying offsets and if a smart company like PG&E is bragging about a new program that allows customers to offset their electricity emissions by planting trees (a dopey program I'll blog about later), then something is very wrong about the general understanding of offsets.

For those who want a basic introduction to offsets, Wikipedia has an excellent entry. I believe the more you know about and think about offsets, the less appealing they are, as these articles make clear.

No rules of the road exist for offsets. Until now. In subsequent posts, I will offer my own rules based on dozens of discussions over the past decade with environmentalists, energy experts, corporations, and would-be offsetters. I'll post the first rule tomorrow, but it can be summed up in two words: No trees!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Find a new source of power, dudes

Google got a lot of great press for its new plan to "voluntarily cut or offset all its greenhouse emissions by the end of the year." But was it all deserved?

The Boston Globe reported the story as "Google aims to go carbon-neutral by end 2007. " The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) reprinted the story, as did Greenwire and others. Buried in the story was this gem:

We can have both

A new study entitled "Sipping Fuel and Saving Lives: Increasing Fuel Economy without Sacrificing Safety" notes:

The public, automakers, and policymakers have long worried about trade-offs between increased fuel economy in motor vehicles and reduced safety. The conclusion of a broad group of experts on safety and fuel economy in the auto sector is that no trade-off is required. There are a wide variety of technologies and approaches available to advance vehicle fuel economy that have no effect on vehicle safety [and vice versa].

The study by the International Council on Clean Transportation concludes that "Technologies exist today that can improve light-duty vehicle fuel economy by up to 50 percent ... with no impact on safety."

The study has two noteworthy figures. The first shows that higher-fuel-economy vehicles [green] are some of the safest while low-fuel-economy vehicles [red] are some of the least safe vehicles driven today -- large, heavy trucks and SUVs. Click to enlarge.

The second figure lists technologies available today that can improve fuel economy with no impact on safety and lists technologies that can improve vehicle safety with little or no effect on fuel economy. Click to enlarge.

The study is conservative in the sense that it doesn't even consider plug-in hybrids, which can significantly increase fuel economy with no impact on safety at all. It is well worth a read.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.