The last (May 08) copy of The Ecologist had yet another Offset-bashing article. Although slightly more considered than previous polemic this one was no better judged. My major criticism is that it was written by Jules Peck. Yes, that is Jules Peck the Director of Arkism. And yes, you can be sure he plugged his own consultancy (Arkism) as an alternative to Offsetting. He is a pro of the Corporate Lobbying scene and sustainability adviser to a major PR firm. He can hardly be said to be neutral on the matter as he has his own axe to grind and his own pitch to sell. Arkism (judging by their web-site) doesn’t yet appear to have any clients. Giving it a glance through suggests that they are not about to get too many either. They appear to be aimed at preparing big Business to surviving the coming paradigm shift through a form of Management Consultancy. Without a case study it is difficult to see exactly what ‘value-add’ they would contribute. What is their big idea? There was little substance behind the style. Considering my own personal experiences of BIG Consulting and the PR Industry over the years I will not hold be breath for anything concrete coming out of Arkism white yet. I wish them luck – don’t get me wrong – but healthy cynicism is required for now until they prove themselves.
Anyway – I digress – back to the article. Anyone hoping to learn anything new will be disappointed. It is largely the same old re-heated ready-meal we have seen in previous years. Firstly I MUST object to the presentation of Offsetting as a way of “buying your way into ECO-heaven”. Having been watching the offset industry flourish over the last seven years I have never seen this within the industry – it is purely a straw-man argument for its detractors. Secondly the article is strewn with terrible generalisations without any stats to back them up one way or another. Jules assumes that he knows what consumers are thinking and tells us! He talks in woolly-terms of there being “real fears” that offsetting is distracting consumers from making real reductions in their own carbon footprints. This is no more valid than my own “real fear” that offset-bashing is taking money away from urgently needed reforestation projects. Or the poor of the world.
Jules then drags in some ‘worst-case-scenarios’ as a row of straw men that he then happily picks away at as if to prove his point. He describes an industry that I just don’t recognise. He resurrects the old cookie about Reforestation of Third World Countries being a form of Colonialism and talks of the displacement of indigenous people. This is all anecdotal ‘evidence’ recycled. No new examples are forthcoming. He has found a rotten apple in the barrel hence the entire barrel is rotten! Alternative arguments about using offsetting as a means of diverting wealth from the rich to the poor are not mentioned. Indeed he mentions an utterly outrageous statistic about the failures of World Bank development projects as if it were relevant to offsetting projects! The failures of the World Bank are well know but there is no causal link between their incompetence in the field of
Jules concludes by writing that the offsetting industry was “in crisis”. Nothing, of course, is further from the truth. The only movement in crisis are the critics of offsetting who are becoming almost hysterical in their venom. Since they are unable to actually prove there is anything wrong with offsetting they have resorted into the kind of slur and junk science of the Climate Change Deniers. It is dragging down what should be an active and healthy debate – a REAL debate about whether particular offsetting schemes work.
So, let us move the debate on. No more negativity. Let’s have a bit of positivism. We need ALL the solutions. Let’s not waste time attacking each other’s good ideas as it distracts the public and will rob investment capital from deserving schemes. It really makes you wonder which side these people are batting for. There is only so far your own money can go. Once you have recycled, sold the car, fit the insulation and solar panels and the biomass boiler, then where do you go? How do you invest further? What we really need to know is how we can make our money really work in stopping further CO2 emissions and how we can invest in increasing this planet’s biomass capacity such that it can absorb even more CO2. THAT is where the interesting story is. How do we make a GOOD investment and not throw our money away. This is the information that consumers and companies need when making their investment decisions. Until then, such drawn-out adverts for your own Management Consultancy really don’t deserve a place in The Ecologist or anywhere else for that matter. It all makes me feel like I have entered the Monty Python Movie “Life of Brian” at the moment the “Peoples Front of Judea” are pouring scorn upon those “splitters” – the “Judean People’s Front”…
Our advice:
Powerdown, recycle, substitute – then invest. The other nine steps don’t become more valid, or work as well, just because you bash the tenth.
