By John Sutter
I trust that most of you have heard of carbon offsets by now — those payments you can make to ease your eco-conscience and mitigate global climate change when you or your business pollutes. One problem plaguing that system has been transparency. It’s been difficult to find out exactly where you money is going, and even more difficult to see if the projects you’re funding work. For instance, you could pay a carbon credit offset on a cross-country plane flight. That money might pay for a rain forest restoration project in Myanmar, but unless you plan on taking a connecting flight to Myanmar, how do you know if it works?
Environmental Defense made an incremental step toward greater carbon credit transparency today when it launched CarbonOffsetList.org, which lets you read about the carbon-sinking programs that you could choose to invest in.
There are other resources out there to help the carbon credit consumer: here’s a blog that lists carbon offsetting projects, and a story by Reuters about a voluntary set of standards for companies that help people reduce their carbon footprints.
Let me know if you know of some others.