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By Root 842 0

India alone suffers as many as half a million premature deaths. Levels of toxics in indoor air can be several hundred times World Health Organization safety standards. Women and children, who spend most time in the house, are the worst affected. Although the health benefits alone more than justify aggressive action on this problem, it has been estimated that black carbon emissions from South Asia could be reduced by as much as 80 percent if old-style cooking over indoor open fires were replaced with smoke-free stoves.32 What is needed is decisive intervention to bring clean stoves and improved fuels to more than half a billion households worldwide that urgently need them.

In order to achieve this, of course, money must be raised. Climate financing is the obvious opportunity: With billions of dollars now changing hands in carbon markets, clean cookstoves could be funded for their climate benefits (both in carbon dioxide and other pollutants) while likewise promoting the health of millions in poorer countries. One way of raising funds is via carbon offsetting. Instead of spending money in situ to reduce emissions, many consumers and industries—especially in rich countries—would find it cheaper and easier to pay for emissions reductions elsewhere. Financially, this is a no-brainer. Reducing global warming by funding clean cookstoves costs as little as a dollar per tonne of carbon equivalent.33 For comparison, a tonne of CO2 was trading for most of 2010 at 14 euros per tonne, while the cost of avoiding a tonne of carbon dioxide by putting solar panels on rooftops in Germany has been estimated at 700 euros or more.34 Using carbon-offset funds to pay for clean cookstoves worldwide is extremely good value for money in terms of climate protection and could potentially save three lives per minute in developing countries due to the accompanying health benefits for women and children.

Here, unfortunately, we run up against what may be the Green movement’s second greatest climate-change mistake, after its opposition to nuclear power. Carbon offsetting was completely derailed as a climate-mitigation strategy in its early stages by vociferous opposition from environmentalists. Prominent Green writers compared offsets to the “indulgences” sold by the medieval Catholic Church, arguing that the only result would be the salving of rich people’s consciences. “The sale of offset indulgences is a dead-end detour off the path of action required in the face of climate change,” argued a publication by a Green-minded group called Carbon Trade Watch in 2007.35 The leftist magazine New Internationalist wrote in an editorial that carbon offsetting was “a falsehood—a con.”36 A clever activist website called Cheatneutral.com promoted the analogy of cheating on your partner: The joke was that if you could pay someone else to remain faithful, then the overall amount of fidelity in the world would remain the same. The website claimed that the cheating analogy was apt because “in the same way, carbon offsetting tries to make it acceptable to carry on emitting excess carbon.” The crux of the argument was a psychological one: “If the carbon offsetters persuade you that it’s possible to offset your emissions, you’ll carry on emitting excess carbon through your lifestyle rather than think about reducing your emissions.”

Unfortunately the Greens got their psychology wrong. They were very successful in establishing the idea in most people’s minds that carbon offsetting was a con and a waste of money. But they were spectacularly unsuccessful in convincing the same people that therefore they needed to fly less or otherwise reduce their personal carbon emissions. What happened instead was that people kept on flying but stopped offsetting. The net effect for the atmosphere, therefore, was that more carbon was emitted than would otherwise have been the case, and additional future warming will be caused as a result. The environmental movement fell into the trap of making the perfect the enemy of the good, and the climate—plus the health of millions of women and children