Leading article: Conscience offsetting

In only a few years, carbon offsetting has become a major market. Companies that take money from people who want to compensate for their carbon emissions and use it to promote various environmentally friendly initiatives, such as planting trees, will soon have an annual combined turnover of £300m a year. And it is not just individuals who are getting involved. Many companies are using annual offset payments and claiming, as a result, that they are "carbon neutral".

But does carbon offsetting actually benefit the environment? According to a new report from two scientists based in California, Ken Caldeira and Govindasamy Bala, most of the world's forests have only a small effect on global temperature. It also claims that those trees furthest from the equator could actually be making global warming worse because they absorb the sun's heat, rather than allowing the earth's surface to reflect it back into space.

The carbon offsetting companies do have a defence. They can plausibly argue that planting trees is a good thing to do regardless of the direct effect on global warming. And they will no doubt point out that offsetting schemes often invest in renewable energy projects and energy saving technology. They are not just interested in tree planting. And it is possible to argue that their very existence encourages people think about their individual impact on the environment.

But the real problem with such schemes lies in the name. "Offsetting" is not an accurate description of what they do. The implication is that planting a new tree or investing in a renewable energy project will instantly neutralise the damage done by a flight or a car journey. But this is not true. Even if trees are planted in the right location on the planet, it will absorb a significant amount of carbon only over the space of hundreds of years. Meanwhile, the individual or company continues to pumps as much carbon into the atmosphere as ever. Given the alarming rate of climate change, offsetting simply does not represent a sustainable model.

The only way to combat global warming is by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide each of us produces. The danger is that we are using offsetting as a way of appeasing our consciences, rather than actually changing our polluting ways.

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