I like to consider myself vaguely green – I don’t own a car, I recycle all I can, turn off the lights when I leave a room, and even have some low energy lightbulbs. But all of this is wiped out by two factors: I fly far too much, and I live in a rented flat that has lousy energy efficiency (poor insulation, no double glazing etc.) Now, I had hoped that I would at least clear my conscience a bit by offsetting the cost of my emissions using the cunning Guardian / Climate Care website – donating as much money to projects that take as much Carbon Dioxide out of the air as I put into it with my flights.
But now the very same newspaper that supports the offsetting website has published this damning article that states that many of these offsetting projects are quite useless anyway, as they have a negative impact on water flow. As for the flat – there’s not much I can do there as I do not own the place. I suppose I could offset the costs of the emissions from our gas fired boiler? But then we are back to the problem raised by the Guardian article. Maybe I just need to settle down somewhere and buy myself an energy efficient house?
