Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?

[PGTips]

Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?

In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon.

Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.

The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing. Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care. The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide ‘treadle pumps’ to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like ‘step machines in a gym’, according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland (1). These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today.

This is an interesting article that I came across while surfing the web. I do not do carbon offsetting, so I do not know if the claims in this article are true. But if they are, carbon offsetting could be a very disturbing trend.

What do you guys think?

[symphonix]

I think there are some very good and some very bad things going around in the Carbon Offset world at the moment. Some of the schemes are great, and clearly fund land rehabilitation and tree planting projects. Some are interesting: I have been dealing with a company that is trying to put forward the point of view that plantations for timber harvesting are actually a marginally better carbon reducer than leaving forest untouched (on the basis that the carbon the trees absorbs ends up going with the wood to make houses and furniture, and the new trees grown in their place will then take up more carbon).

This scheme, on the other hand, sounds like pure evil. Encouraging the poor in third world countries to *not* use technology that helps them be productive is just another way of widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

In the company I work for, we have been supporting conservation volunteer groups instead of using any of the hard-to-measure carbon offset schemes around. I'm keeping my eye on it, though.

[Rhisiart]

David Cameron (leader of the British Conservative Party) is misguided.

His party are in opposition to Gordon Brown's Labour government. Cameron has vowed to make the Conservatives more 'green' as he believes this will win votes and maybe defeat Labour at the next general election.

He has had to go to some length to make his own personal image as green as possible. Personally I think he is a chump.

[Lt Major Burns]

david cameron is showing more sides than the town clock. be nice to see what Brown will do, given 4 years. his strong will, determination and intelligence could serve us well. his treatment of various issues head on has been nice, and his emerging defiance toward america is welcome. i'm not an advocate of becoming enemies, obviously, but showing independent strategies, even if they are complimentary, is a good thing. he has a strong set of political viewpoints, and evidence of a good, well-thought out direction in which to lead. he's showing a good awareness for the adapting political landscape, and of a vastly changing world.

i was afraid that he wouldn't show enough of a distinctive leadership, but the last few months have been very good toward him, even though he has had to deal with at least 3 major crises within that time (major bomb plots, agricultural disease outbreaks and terrible flooding)


i know where my vote will go.