Comments on: Can You Bribe the Environment to Reduce the Size of Your Carbon Footprint? http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html BootsnAll's One Stop Guide to Business Travel Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:00:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Business Travel Logue http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html/comment-page-1#comment-1952 Business Travel Logue Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:28:53 +0000 http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html#comment-1952 Claire, thanks for your comment. I would be happy to try to explain my logic. I'm a big fan of planting more trees and yes, deforestation is a devastating problem. The problems I have with that type of program is that 1. It isn't sustainable. 2. If the trees being planted are reforesting a deforested location, they are only making up for previous damage to the environment. and 3. While there is land available for planting, much of it is more highly valued by the owners as a potential site for real estate development. True, that is much more of a problem in some areas of the world than others. The urban sprawl in the United States and developing countries ensures the majority of land will be used for development rather than an environmental purpose. I wish that wasn't the case, but dollars talk and real estate developers have dollars. What really set me off was the quote I listed above. That is an actual quote from a press release for a tour company. Unfortunately, I deleted the link to the release. That type of language gives people the false assumption that they are actually IMPROVING the carbon levels by flying, rather than achieving an "eye for an eye" type of trade-off. A study by people much smarter than I conducted by the University of California found the following: We find that replacement of current vegetation by trees on a global basis would lead to a global annual mean warming of 1.6 C, nearly 75% of the warming produced under a doubled CO2 concentration, while global replacement by grasslands would result in a cooling of 0.4 C. These results suggest that more research is necessary before forest carbon storage should be deployed as a mitigation strategy for global warming. In particular, high latitude forests probably have a net warming effect on the Earth's climate. http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/324200.pdf So planting additional trees to "make up" for the carbon created by flying can actually exacerbate the problem. I'm just a lowly blogger, not environmental scientist, but I think this is just a way to create a false sense of self satisfaction to consumers. Corner

Claire, thanks for your comment. I would be happy to try to explain my logic.

I’m a big fan of planting more trees and yes, deforestation is a devastating problem. The problems I have with that type of program is that

1. It isn’t sustainable.
2. If the trees being planted are reforesting a deforested location, they are only making up for previous damage to the environment. and
3. While there is land available for planting, much of it is more highly valued by the owners as a potential site for real estate development. True, that is much more of a problem in some areas of the world than others. The urban sprawl in the United States and developing countries ensures the majority of land will be used for development rather than an environmental purpose. I wish that wasn’t the case, but dollars talk and real estate developers have dollars.

What really set me off was the quote I listed above. That is an actual quote from a press release for a tour company. Unfortunately, I deleted the link to the release. That type of language gives people the false assumption that they are actually IMPROVING the carbon levels by flying, rather than achieving an “eye for an eye” type of trade-off.

A study by people much smarter than I conducted by the University of California found the following:

We find that replacement of current vegetation
by trees on a global basis would lead to a global annual mean warming of 1.6 C, nearly
75% of the warming produced under a doubled CO2 concentration, while global
replacement by grasslands would result in a cooling of 0.4 C. These results suggest
that more research is necessary before forest carbon storage should be deployed as a
mitigation strategy for global warming. In particular, high latitude forests probably have
a net warming effect on the Earth’s climate.

http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/324200.pdf

So planting additional trees to “make up” for the carbon created by flying can actually exacerbate the problem.

I’m just a lowly blogger, not environmental scientist, but I think this is just a way to create a false sense of self satisfaction to consumers.

Corner ]]> By: claire harte http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html/comment-page-1#comment-1909 claire harte Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:01:01 +0000 http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html#comment-1909 I don't understand your logic. Trees absorb and act as stores of carbon dioxide so it is perfectly possible to plant enough trees that will absorb and store the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by your flight. The limits are the amount of land available for planting, but we are no where near that limit. The trees will release methane, a far worse greenhouse gas, when they die but that would be decades hence depending on species chosen. Deforestation is a major env problem so reforestation helps with that. Don't get me wrong. I am not in favour of flying - with or without carbon offsets. We took the train to Prague this Xmas rather than fly and I am refusing to fly to Belfast for business trip. I'll trake train/boat instead. But I wondered if you could explain your thinking. Corner

I don’t understand your logic.
Trees absorb and act as stores of carbon dioxide so it is perfectly possible to plant enough trees that will absorb and store the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by your flight.
The limits are the amount of land available for planting, but we are no where near that limit.
The trees will release methane, a far worse greenhouse gas, when they die but that would be decades hence depending on species chosen.
Deforestation is a major env problem so reforestation helps with that.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not in favour of flying – with or without carbon offsets. We took the train to Prague this Xmas rather than fly and I am refusing to fly to Belfast for business trip. I’ll trake train/boat instead.
But I wondered if you could explain your thinking.

Corner ]]> By: Business Travel Logue http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html/comment-page-1#comment-1594 Business Travel Logue Wed, 31 Jan 2007 02:37:33 +0000 http://www.businesstravellogue.com/travel-tips/can-you-bribe-the-environment-to-reduce-the-size-of-your-carbon-footprint.html#comment-1594 Check out these related posts from Mary at the Eco Travel Logue. Lucky for me, she agrees with my standpoint. http://www.ecotravellogue.com/planning-a-trip/carbon-credits-my-opinion.html http://www.ecotravellogue.com/planning-a-trip/carbon-offsets-rated-at-last.html Corner

Check out these related posts from Mary at the Eco Travel Logue. Lucky for me, she agrees with my standpoint.

http://www.ecotravellogue.com/planning-a-trip/carbon-credits-my-opinion.html

http://www.ecotravellogue.com/planning-a-trip/carbon-offsets-rated-at-last.html

Corner ]]>