Whatever your opinion on the health care debate, i think you’ll agree, that it’s pushed most other public policy issues off the table. The fight against global warming is no longer a top priority.  In fact any legislation bringing in a carbon cap, doesn’t charge the largest emitters for their carbon credits and it sets the levels much higher than science suggests they need to be to stop and turn back Global Warming.  I personally think that if this is the sort of “carbon cap and trade” system that comes about, it will have little or no impact on the way most Americans live.  With or without cap and trade, it’s time to put a carbon tax on gasoline and other non-renewable fuels. What is needed now is a consumer movement toward greener products and adding a tax to gasoline, to fund green energy, via tax credits.  A movement toward renewable electricity will not only help the environment, but will also create new jobs in research, development, manufacturer, installation and maintenance of these systems

Well they didn’t call me “Little Miss Sunshine” or link to any of my sites, but:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/05/AR2008100502518_2.html

“People still come to the site, but where you used to get people signing up [for offsets] every day, now you’d be lucky to get a few people a week,” said Fred Weiss, a small-time offset seller based in Ann Arbor, Mich., who sends customers stickers that say, “Carbon Neutral Vehicle.” Apparently that isn’t as important now.

“Who cares about the environment? Am I going to have a house next week?” he imagined would-be customers saying.

Not much, but at least they quoted me correctly and spelled my name right.

I recently had to the opportunity to be locked in an internet free location for a day or two which resulted in a lot more thinking than i would admit to.  A few thoughts came thru that were directly related to this blog and the Carbon Offsets business that i run.

First i’ve been worried about this “collapse” of the financial system due to bad mortgages for years and while i imagined this would happen, i guess i never believed it would get this bad, let alone the possibility that it could become even worse. 

Much as we’ve seen in the commodities market recently, there has sharp drop in carbon offset prices.  In the US carbon offset markets, these offsets have dropped in price from about $2.25 a ton in january to about $1.80 today.  That doesn’t sound too surprising or devastating, until i mention that during that time the price peaked at just under $7.50 a ton during the months in between.   While i’m sure this affects many carbon offsetters, we’re small enough and new enough that we can only benefit by these reduced cost of offsets.  The real story here isn’t the cost of the offsets, or the reason for the great swings in value. 

The real story is that Global Warming was controlling the mindspace of American consumers and voters in January and February and is all but an afterthought today.  The shift in society’s focus away from global warming to “Drill, Drill, Drill” (thank you larry kudlow) was prompted, not surprisingly by oil skyrocketing over $100 a barrel right to $150.  Nobody who is trying to afford the SUV they drive to work, doesn’t care about the earth getting hotter, because the night sweats are increasingly chilled as we worry about keeping our jobs, homes and feeding our families.  Unfortunately, much like the entreprenuers who burn the forest of brasil to grow soybeans, our thoughts toward the future have focused on the next few weeks instead of the next 10-20 years.  Until that focus shifts, complicated/abstract ideas like carbon offsets, will be of less interest than green actions that help to save money.  The next few years green needs to focus on helping the family budget to help change the world.

That old Hollywood line, actually a misquote, has been used for comic relief more than a few times since the Treasure of the Sierra.  And while you may have hoped this would be another, that’s about all the humor………….
 The reason i bring up badges, is because of the CO2 offset badge there on the upper right of this website. It represents that this web site is running carbon neutral by virtue of a carbon offset provided by 4Offsets.com.  4Offsets.com helps individual and businesses offset their CO2 emissions as a way to speed adoption of renewable.  These offsets are based on CO2 offset commodity contracts, that have been ‘retired’ from circulation.  The contracts were awarded to people, projects and companies for efforts that eliminate emissions of greenhouse gases.  The contracts, that might be awarded to a wind farm or for planting and maintaining a forest, are sold to companies who have either a legal or self-imposed madate to reduce their CO2 production.  The theory and the reality, is that this market helps to increase the cashflow on green investments.  As the demand for these offsets increase and the price increases, the amount of money an offset will deliver to green project will increase the investment’s rate of return.  The next part is that the higher rate of return will attract more investment and therefore more wind, solar, and trees, at an increasingly fast pace.

I wrote about these carbon offsets and their use by Aspen Skiing and the concern, expressed by Aspen Ski’s environmental officer, these offsets really are helping speed change.  Following some research, I’ve concluded that while the offset market is less effective at incentivizing green energy, than $100 a barrel oil, it is a sound theory.  Any additional return on investment helps to increase it’s attractiveness.  This is especially true for new, expensive technologies such as solar.  If the market for these offsets increase, causing the price of offsets to generally rise, it will further fuel the march to a sustainable world.

The result of my research was to decide that i should focus my business efforts on fighting the greenhouse crisis and that carbon dioxide offsets are the best option available to ‘kick start’ US society’s shift away from hydrocarbon fuels.  I would like to announce that i have joined with a couple of friends to create a CO2 offset business at www.4Offsets.com.  We currently are running our beta testing, so please let us know what you think.

I’ve been sent this link to this NY Times Article by about 5 or 6 people today and sent it myself to about the same number.  The article is about the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) looking into the carbon offset market, since there is seemingly no standard for what an offset is.  I argue that this is not true.  There are transparent offsets avail for this newly expanding market, serving individuals and business who can’t wait for government to act against global warming.

In the name of disclosure I first need to say: I am about to launch a Carbon Offset business in the next few days, so i have a vested interest in the business.  I have spent a few months researching this business to determine the what sort of service to offer.  I started by trying to build the business by sequestering land from development, in sensitive areas of the world, but found that there was a lack of transparency in that industry and that the competition was mainly creating their own solutions.  Saving an acre of land didn’t necessarily mean the same thing with each vendor, most didn’t say if the fee was to sequester the land forever or just a year.  Even the Nature Conservancy’s “Adopt an Acre” site doesn’t say what it means to adopt an acre.  The same thing can be argued about “planting a tree”.  Sure a tree will trap tons of CO2 over 50-100 years, but only if the tree lives that long.  Is planting a sampling that won’t weigh 100 pounds 5 or 10 years out really offsetting the carbon we burn today?  And again, i want to make offsets easy for people and businesses to use to help change the world.  I’m not looking to create a solution, go plant trees and then create the studies to prove it right.  I want to help people act on their desire to do something about the greenhouse effect.

The solution that i found are exchange traded Carbon Offset commodity contracts.  These are offsets granted to various private and public organizations, via 3rd party certifiers, projects that reduce greenhouse gases.  These groups sell these offsets to other groups such as Utility Companies, looking to offset their CO₂ emissions.   These are the standard, transparent offsets that the FTC says are not available or at least are not widely use. Our business is only uses these exchange trade contract to fill our clients Carbon Offset needs.  I’ll be posting an official announcement when we launch in the next day or two.