Thu 29 May 2008

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23 Responses to “ Offset My War Bonnet ”

Comments:

1. Larry George says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 9:17 am

   Did you forward your information to the College?

   I’ve never been a fan of carbon offsets (I fall in the camp of those who regard them as akin to indulgences of Middle Ages yore). Still, I have spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to lessen the actual environmental impact of graduation, and I’m a bit flummoxed. I know the College has gone towards having more finger food, buying local food, using washable plates and silverware where any are needed, and composting waste (and using more compostable materials). I hope they’ve dropped the practice of providing thousands of bottles of water, and have found a better way to hydrate the crowds. Not much more that can be done on those fronts without severely compromising the celebratory experience.

   Trying to lower transportation miles (and “green” more of those that need to be travelled) would be one area of major impact, but I’m not sure how to do that. I guess the College could offer ride boards and even provide buses from Boston, New York etc., but I doubt many families would use them (there is the reality of needing to transport all of the graduates’ possessions, after all).

   It’s easy for us to shake our heads at the carbon offsets, but what is the College to do?

2. frank uible says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 10:18 am

   The College can engage in reasonable efforts to conduct a “green” commencement without forking over the hard earned dollars of its financial supporters in a way which at very best is facially questionable. I’m sickened and dismayed that the College would naively allow itself to be the victim of a jackpot which any savvy sub-teenager from the mean streets would know doesn’t get past the smell test.

3. David says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 11:08 am

   1) More background reading here.

   A separate study published this week by US watchdog group International Rivers argues that nearly three quarters of all registered CDM projects were complete at the time of approval, suggesting that CDM money was not needed to finance them.

   “It would seem clear that a project that is already built cannot need extra income in order to be built,” said Patrick McCully, director of the thinktank in California. “Judging additionality has turned out to be unknowable and unworkable. It can never be proved definitively that if a developer or factory owner did not get offset income they would not build their project.”

   2) I have not forwarded anything to the College. Feel free to! Fortunately, EphBlog is widely read in Hopkins Hall.

   3) An enterprising Record reporter should look more closely at the organization that is cashing Williams’ checks. Are they a total scam? Probably not. Amy Johns is smart so I bet/hope that she did a fair amount of research before picking NativeEnergy. That they are located in Vermont makes it more likely that they are known-to-be honest.

4. JG says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

   It is unfortunate that this purchase of carbon off-sets wasn’t successful, but to state something like:
   

   …scam to which the College has fallen (willing) victim.

   is to basically accuse some member of the Williams administration of being actively careless with College funds. Is that really what you’re implying? To have “fallen” for this - if it really is a scam, is different from being a willing participant in anything. Yes, it turns out that the wind farm isn’t up and running yet, but for all the articles you want to link about how off-sets don’t work, there are lots of people who think that they do. This, my friend, does not a “scam” or “95% scam” make (again with the mysterious assigning of percentages to things).

   I’m willing to bet the College has invested money in stocks that ended up being bad investments or worthless that somebody somewhere told them were risky, does that make the investment office a “willing” participant in a scam? Not so much.

   Just a note to be careful with your words please. Your impugning the motives of the participants has made me doubt the entire rest of the likely legitimate point of this post, because I can just file it away with the other (large) collection of posts that seem personally, rather than factually, motivated. That may or may not be true here, but as we discussed this morning at breakfast, tone matters.

5. David Kane says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

   Well it depends on what you mean by “actively careless.” Carbon offsets, as a class, are a scam. Giving money to a company like Native Energy does not decrease the amount of emitted carbon relative to what would have happened if you hadn’t given money just like indulgences do not actually get you into heaven.

   Now, lots of people wish that this were not true, dream that offsets/indulgences might work some magic. And maybe someday they will. But not today.

   Do these facts mean that someone at the College is being “actively careless?” I am not so sure. I do not know what happened, but a guess would be that senior college folks are honestly into greenery and see the benefits of positioning Williams as being a green school. (I certainly could agree with the latter.)

   So, someone says, “Hey! Let’s make graduation more green! That would help the planet and get some good press.” Then someone asks Amy Johns to figure out how much carbon emissions graduation causes and what the College might do about it. She (correctly) calculates emissions and then notes (correctly) that many right thinking people buy offsets and that, if you were going to buy offsets, Native Energy seems like a reputable place. The the powers-that-be write the check.

   Has anyone been “actively careless?” I am not so sure. Amy Johns did her job (especially if she pointed out all the issues with carbon offsets) and the senior folks did their job (maybe $8,000 is worth some nice free press even if the substance behind the spending accomplishes nothing).

   And that just leaves me to do my job and point out what is going on behind the curtain.

6. frank uible says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

   I’m not implying but directly expressing that Williams through its juvenile judgment appears to have permitted itself become a gull.

7. FROSH mom says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

   David,

   Again, I take issue with the way you start the post. JG refers to it as “tone”. To me, it reveals a bias on your part, a desire to be right about past “suspicions”, and to set the thread in a certain direction, as if guilt is already a given.

   You say: “I speculated that this was probably a scam, that the college was wasting money…” and then, “How much money will the college waste this year?”

   First of all, these kinds of accusations on your part are nothing new. I would bet you are wrong much more often than you are right and that the “percentages” probably wouldn’t be in your favor here, if you bothered to check back.

   And when it comes to the subject of “greening” and “carbon offsets” and trying to do the right thing environmentally, the field is so new, the technology so “in the process”, that we are, all of us, the college included, bound to make lots of mistakes. None of us should be pointing fingers at this stage. And the right tone to the post could have started a discussion that could prove helpful to the college, rather than accusatory.

8. (d)avid says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

   Am I missing something? Your complaint about the deal the college struck is that the money has not yet been raised and the wind farm may never be built because of lack of funds. Then you quote Patrick McCully as saying, “It would seem clear that a project that is already built cannot need extra income in order to be built,” which implies that carbon offsets are effective only for wind farms that are not already built. By that logic, the College seems to have selected an appropriate project, right?

9. David Kane says:
   May 29th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

   Am I missing something?

   Well, it depends on how much time you want to devote to the issue. If you only have time for one article, go with the one linked above from The Los Angeles Times. If you have more time, then I think this report is excellent.

   Summary: Carbon offsets are a scam. The amount of carbon released in a world with offsets is about the same as that which would have been released in a world without offsets. If you really want to decrease the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, you need to actual omit less of it.

   The scam aspect tends to come in two flavors: Claiming carbon credit for something that would have been anyway or taking someone’s money and not doing anything useful with it.

   The best way to see concretely that Williams, specifically, has been scammed is to look at the financials of Native Energy. What money comes in and what money goes out? Turns out that (Surprise!), they won’t tell you. They are a for-profit company. Bet they have great margins!

   None of us should be pointing fingers at this stage. And the right tone to the post could have started a discussion that could prove helpful to the college, rather than accusatory.

   Even though I think/know that this money is being wasted I shouldn’t tell anyone? I should keep quite?

   And, even better, I am being helpful! I am telling Morty (and Boyd and Johns) not to write another check for carbon offsets this year. Spend that money elsewhere.

10. Rory says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    (d)avid,

    thanks for stealing my question–if the goal of carbon offsetting is to fund future projects that will provide green energy, isn’t the fact that OFWB not yet built, if anything, a sign that this was a potentially useful investment as long as the rest of the funds needed are secured? Sounds like a capital venture plan for green energy to me–isn’t that what people are begging for?

    Plus, isn’t the gist of the e-mail that the wind farm IS being built and that this money will help make it a profitable (and thus more replicable) construction? Where’s the scam exactly?

    I’d like to add to the discussion of tone how this post shows how important tone is. This random person from OFWB (Hi!) found the blog and felt the duty to respond, likely because the tone of the posts has been quite negative. The next person who is deciding whether or not to invest into OFWB might do a google search and find ephblog and your tone may have an impact on that funding. Public writing requires a level of carefulness on tone and factchecking otherwise not required–isn’t that your own position on publicly posting written papers from students? How would you grade this result?

11. Rory says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    ahh…crossposting.

    so the critique is that these projects would be completed without the carbon offset purchases? fair enough, but that’s a sign that the nascent industry/market for carbon offsets needs to mature, not that it is a complete scam.

    as your report notes, even “insiders” are concerned about the lack of oversight and regulation–the idea itself isn’t bad, the implementation likely is. ok, i get it. Heck, the report even highlights a futures oriented manner of investing that is similar to carbon offsets but marketed differently (in chapter 6).

    the problem is that without more clarity as to where your critique lies, it seems that you are impugning not only the middleman (Native Energy) but also OFWB.

12. David Kane says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    The College cites two projects specifically. The second is for the Wanner Family Dairy Farm Methane Project in Narvon, PA. Here is what the Los Angeles Times reported about a seemingly identical project.

    Selling clean airIn the rolling hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, outside the town of Berlin, Dave Van Gilder’s family has been raising cows for four decades. He and his twin sons, Jason and Justin, tend to their 400 Holsteins while his wife, Connie, keeps the books.

    The smell of manure has long been the sweet exhaust of a dairy farm running full tilt.

    Millions of pounds of cow excrement over the decades were funneled from the barns to a 3.3-million-gallon lagoon, where it decayed, burping invisible clouds of the potent greenhouse gas methane.

    In the days of Van Gilder’s father, nobody cared about the greenhouse gases.

    But things began to change a few years ago. Van Gilder didn’t know it, but his lagoon had become an economic opportunity.

    A local congressman urged him to apply for a state alternative energy grant to build a system that would capture methane from cow manure and burn it to generate electricity.

    The whole project, known as a methane digester, would cost about $750,000 — $631,000 of it coming from the state and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    Van Gilder had to make up the difference, but he figured he could earn that back — and in several years start making money — by supplying electricity for the farm and selling the excess to the local utility.

    A year before construction began, Van Gilder was contacted by Native Energy, which wanted to buy his emissions reduction, along with the reductions of others who had won state energy grants.

    Van Gilder had never heard of the company or the idea of selling clean air.

    Nothing came of his discussions with the company until construction started on the massive tank for heating manure. He gladly signed a contract to sell Native Energy 29,000 tons in carbon dioxide reductions — the company’s estimate of how much greenhouse gas the digester will keep out of the atmosphere over the next 20 years.

    “There wasn’t a lot of negotiation,” said Van Gilder, who was happy to accept whatever the company was offering.

    Family members said the contract prohibited them from disclosing the payment, but based on a contract with another dairy farmer, signed with Native Energy, it was about $70,000, or $2.40 a ton.

    Justin Van Gilder said the money had nothing to do with the family’s decision to build its methane plant. “It was a free bonus,” he said.

    “We still don’t understand it all,” Connie Van Gilder said. “It’s hard for us to fathom, to see what it is doing.”

    It’s a scam! Native Energy goes around to farmers who would have done X anyway and then gives them some extra money. It then turns around and charges Williams twice (?) that amount to claim a carbon offset. Nice work if you can get it!

    But that no actual carbon reduction has taken place.

13. David Kane says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    In summary, I have provided decent evidence that the College spent money on two projects. (Actually, it seems clear that the College did not spend money on any projects directly. I bet they just wrote a check to Native Energy and picked some nice sounding stories from their website.) One of those projects failed. (No less carbon created.) One of those projects, assuming that it was similar to the other neighboring projects, would have been completed anyway. (No less carbon created.)

    In other words, Williams $8,400 check accomplished nothing.

    Now, it is possible to tell a nice story about a fantasy world in which Williams finds a project that would not have been created without its help but that, with just a few thousand dollars, does make economic sense and then ensures that the project gets done. In fact, I could even be convinced to applaud such an effort if it involved Williams students working in the local area. Don’t we have methane-producing cows in Williamstown? Shouldn’t we have windmills in Berlin Pass?

    But in the real world, organizations like Native Energy have zero incentive to find such projects. Instead, they have every reason to do whatever it takes to find picturesque causes that someone like Amy Johns will want to select from their scrapbook of options.

    There may come a day when carbon offsets do what they purport to do. When that day comes, we can discuss how much money the College should spend. But, in the world we live in today, the College accomplishes nothing by writing checks to the hustlers at Native Energy.

14. FROSH mom says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    David,

    You’ve obviously done a lot of work on this, and probably raised some very good questions. I don’t fault you for bringing it up. I will admit that the whole concept of carbon offsets seems highly flawed to me…one that may benefit from more scrutiny.

    However, I do honestly believe that a healthier, and more informative discussion, would have been one that ‘invited’ the participation of the college, rather than putting them on the defensive. I think you’d be surprised at the results that would ensue from a simple adjustment to the “tone” of your posts.

    That’s all…

15. FROSH mom says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    That said, and speaking of carbon output, perhaps Williams and ‘others’ could learn something from those liberal lefties out west. Even L.A. has Nashville beat!

    Perhaps their darn good weather has something to do with it?
    :-)

16. frank uible says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    Those rankings are, for the most part, the result of historical, economic, geographic and climatological “accident”, not planning or political attitude - much less willing, pointed sacrifice by denizens.

17. Ken Thomas '93 says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    On that note, perhaps this is a place to leave a small response to Jeff.

    My favorite lawyer of the moment (the one on the first floor, proximity determining favour in such matters) was defending someone in one of Tennessee more rural counties last week.

    Some readers may not be aware that judges in large swatches of the US tradition are simply elected officials– perhaps, from experience, I should add quotes around “elected–” who need not ever have studied law. (Then there are those who sent someone else to the BAR exam).

    So David begins to make a point, and the “judge” (perhaps that’s the term here that should be in quotes) interrupts him and asks, “Now, David, you’re not going to bring the law into this, are you?”

    The DA, who is rather close, looks over and comments “first time out here, huh?”

    I wish I could add the accents.

    After some drinks, it did, however, bring a laugh or two. “David, you’re not going to bring the law into this, are you?”

    Is this the effect of history, economy, geography– or just plain bad weather?

18. FROSH mom says:
    May 30th, 2008 at 1:10 am

    Ken,
    Shouldn’t there be some sort of software developed that translates ‘accents’ in much the same way as ‘other languages’? Because, IMO, they are equally important in communicating subtle ‘distinctions’ in what is being said. Great anecdote…and a very real reminder of just how far we have to go…

    And Frank, I think if you bother to read the link I posted, you might be ( a tiny bit) more willing to believe that the ‘new’ studies on carbon output in U.S. cities are based on more than just “historical, geological, and climatological accident.”

    “Planning”, at the very least, is starting to play into it.

19. frank uible says:
    May 30th, 2008 at 5:40 am

    BART was built decades before anyone ever uttered the now overused and self-congratulatory word, green. At any rate the people of Toledo are no dumber than those of San Francisco (and are less arrogant and consequently less intolerable, intolerability being one of the greatest forms of pollution).

20. Jeff Sommer says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 1:09 am

    Lets examine David’s dairy farm example a little closer.

    Even though this farmer might have done the “right” thing without the additional funds provided via offsets, the additional economic return will induce others to contemplate such actions.

    This is basic supply and demand, the “invisible hand” described to so may of us on Econ 101. The fact that we cannot connect the individual dots and see the overall trend in these posts, does not mean it isn’t at work.

    There may be several entrepreneurs perfecting the next generation of methane recovery systems as a result of these additional funds being available to their potential customer base - which will expand as a result of these incentives.

    It would seem premature at best to draw a conclusion from one or two projects. The larger question is whether the economic incentives shaping the investment climate for clean projects has been enhanced by offsets. If so, the question then becomes whether other approaches could be more efficient.

    But that second question is impossible to answer from David’s post. And I would argue that David’s post does not shed light on the first question either.

    To use an example from the oil and gas industry, paying more for a barrel of oil goes to existing producers as well as folks who will now drill extra wells, or invest in expensive extraction techniques. We don’t say that money is wasted on the existing producers or folks who would have drilled a new well anyway, do we? Is David proposing a tiered payment scheme for the oil and gas industry? The benefit of supply and demand and incentives is on the margin where behavior is changed. The same dynamic works on the conservation end too. Some people bought hybrid’s when gas was $2.50 a gallon; others waited until it was $3.50.

    So, I think David’s conclusion on offsets is premature and the conclusion that some projects would have occurred anyway really misses the point and runs contrary to basic economic theory and how these incentives manifest themselves in changed behaviors - incentives changing a million decisions that add up to a big effect - but each decision occuring at an individual’s own set price where the transaction makes sense.

    David may be right about a specific project if fraud or mismanagement are involved. But without a valid sampling of projects - even if there is occasional fraud - it is premature to reach the conclusion that was first posited.

21. frank uible says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Please prevail upon the College to accept my offer for its purchase of one million dollars worth of my carbon offsets (if the entire purchase price is received in cash by noon on Monday, then an early payment bonus of 100,000 offsets will be provided). Be assured that in this regard I have almost completed a prototype perpetual motion machine in my basement. Unfortunately no one is permitted to witness its progress - for security reasons of course, but take my word for it - I am both trustworthy and creditworthy. Check with the Williamstown Police Department if it pleases you. This offer is the College’s last chance. On Wednesday Amherst College will be give an exclusive right to accept this unparalleled opportunity.

22. Larry George says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am

    LOL.

    We could also set the sports teams up on bikes and ergometers linked to batteries and have them light the gym, instead of paying someone else for energy and offsets.

    Any word on whether the College purchased offsets for this weekend?

23. Justin Thyme says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 2:41 am

    The Green Movement is to our society what Christianity was to Western Civilization. The New World Order with its age-old eastern paradigm, introduced to Western Man, the notions of Guilt and Sin, where through the remission of our sins and through the lucrative offerings of indulgences, man was able to reduce his shame and thus his guilt and thus his suffering while on his way to Heaven.

    Martin Luther, in his zeal to repeal the burden placed upon man, attempted to raise man from the position of the church as mediator between God and Man, and allow Man the dignitiy of finding God directly, without indulgences, wihout having to submit to any pyramidic structure, to an authority which predated upon the sovereignty of the indivdual.

    Pollution is the equivalent of Sin in a modern age of our current State. The filth that gives rise to Family Planning, Population Control, Carbon Offsets, and numerous other initiatives is the sewage that is overwhelming our common sense. This predatory program feeds the psychopathic pathology of that small percentile of our population by developing new sources of capital at the expense of eliminating poverty while attempting by appearance to preserve biodiversity.

    Al Gore promoted the looting of our world’s treasuries. He is representative of a global swindle.

    Guilt is a powerful tool within the hands of scam artists. Are you on the Swindler’s List? Are you buying indulgences to offset your infidelity? Are you compensating for your gulty conscience?

    What we have failed to realize is to understand the differences between biological and fossil carbon. That if we are to achieve true sustainability then we need to understand the scientific basis of the carbon fluxes of complex ecosystems.

    Salvaging conscience will not absolve us of global warming. Creating illusions through self-imposed taxation only stands to defeat decisive action necessary to avert a climate crisis.

    The current process of Carbon Offsets is impossible to verify with regards to the actual reductions of carbon emissions. This is the new market place for swindlers to establish a new brokerage business of selling and buying credits. This is a new scam sanctioned by our high priests with the acquiesence of our guilty society upon whom this swindle will be carried out. Gaming the system, this trading system will introduce even more complex and abstract carbon-based financial instruments and sold to nations and businesses around the world.

    We need to ask: who receives the benefit and who bears the cost?

    Taking responsibility for behavior and having an awareness at the community level about the interrealtionships of indivdual behavior and the global environmental consequences of such behavior at the local level is more important than the authority of polcies that affect everyone at the global level. Outflows of capital and credit should be strictly within local communities where the money investments, debts, operating costs are found within the local economy.

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