Author: admin
Published: Nov 13th, 2009
Category: Europe
Comments: None

Ethical travel company drops carbon offsetting

One of Britain’s leading ethical travel operators has launched a scathing attack on the carbon offset industry and has decided to stop offering offsets to its customers as a way of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Justin Francis, the founder of responsibletravel.com, said he had decided to abandon offsets because he believes they have become a “medieval pardon that allows people to continue polluting”.

In 2002 his company became one of the first British travel operators to begin offering customers the opportunity to buy into an offsetting scheme. By paying money to a third party operator that ran carbon-reducing projects in the developing world, holidaymakers could jump on board flights supposedly happy in the knowledge that any carbon dioxide released during their journey would eventually be reduced by the equivalent amount somewhere else.

Supporters of the scheme, which has now become a multibillion pound industry, say it is a vital way of quickly reducing the world’s carbon emissions and combating climate change. But a growing number of critics say it is simply a way for people and businesses in the developed world to buy their way out of a problem without actually committing themselves to reductions in their own emissions. After years of falling into the former camp, Mr Francis has now joined the growing number of offset critics.

“Carbon offsetting is an ingenious way to avoid genuinely reducing your carbon emissions,” he said yesterday. “It’s a very attractive idea

Tags: carbon credits, Carbon Emissions, Carbon Offsets