Articles by Adam Stein

Measure, monitor, reduce, offset

Haven't had enough on offsets yet? Good. Romm's zeroth rule of carbon offsets is that you should "do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions" before buying offsets. At first blush, this reads like a memo from Obviousland, a staunch statement in favor of apple pie. Pretty much every marketer of carbon offsets heavily stresses that offset purchases should go hand-in-hand with serious attempts at conservation, and I certainly agree.

So far, so good. But the rest of the post serves as a lesson in what can happen when common sense hardens into ideology. After making a bunch of points about how the worst thing you can do is actually feel good about purchasing offsets, Romm offers up Exhibit A of the wrong way to go about buying offsets: Google.

Trees are good for a lot of things; carbon offsetting isn’t one of them

The first rule of offsets, according to Joseph Romm, is "no trees." This is a pretty good rule, as these thing go. The TerraPass offset portfolio contains no tree-planting projects, despite the fact that most consumers love trees and the fact that tree-planting projects are typically cheaper than offsets from renewable energy projects.

So if trees are both consumer-friendly and cost-effective, why avoid them? There are lots of reasons, and Romm chooses to focus on one of the more minor ones: a recent study suggesting that trees outside of tropical zones actually cause a net increase in global warming by absorbing sunlight.

Carbon offsets are tricky business

Joseph Romm has been running a series of "rules of the road for carbon offsets" on these pages. This is a worthwhile endeavor, and as good of an excuse as any for me to provide some shade and color to the frequently misconceived debate over offsets. Although I mostly agree with Romm's conclusions, I don't think he chose the best route to reach them.

My intent is not to rebut Romm's proposed rules -- again, I (mostly) agree with all of the guidelines posted so far, even if they do contain some important errors of fact and emphasis. And more generally, I strongly support efforts to arm individuals with more information about offset quality.

But the rules are framed a bit oddly, offered up as some sort of counterpoint to a lawless industry peddling easy environmental solutions to polluters run amok. The first post announces an "aim to pick a fight with those overhyping offsets."

New financial instruments may one day plug cities’ building codes into global carbon market

The William J. Clinton foundation has arranged billions in financing to help a coalition of sixteen cities cut urban emissions by applying a range of energy efficiency measures to aging buildings.

Efficiency measures tends to get lumped in under the heading of conservation, but they really deserve to be their own full-fledged category of solutions to global warming. If conservation is simply doing less of a polluting activity, efficiency is doing the same activity with less energy. Turning off the lights is conservation. Screwing in a compact fluorescent light bulb is efficiency.

Efficiency measures deserve their own category because they are among the most important strategies for reducing emissions. Emissions reductions from efficiency projects are immediate (which is good), they are often cheap or even free (which is great), and they don't require individuals to make significant changes to behavior (which is important to quick adoption, no matter how much we might wish otherwise).