Land Rover

Put on the oven gloves: offsetting is a serious hot potato at the moment.

Basically, it's all about neutralising your carbon dioxide emissions. You do this by investing in something which reduces or avoids CO2 altogether, so that the amount saved offsets your original emissions.

Typical offsetting projects include persuading Eritreans to swap their open fires for charcoal stoves or, more commonly, converting to renewable energy sources and planting trees.

Trade in 'carbon credits' has become very brisk recently, each credit worth about the same as a tonne of carbon. Concerned pop stars like the Pet Shop Boys and Radiohead have been doing it for years; concerned car companies like Land Rover have recently realised that it might be the only way to avoid the mother of all PR disasters as the anti-4x4 lobby becomes more militant.

The 'carbon economy' is growing rapidly: by 2009 it's expected to exceed £300m globally.

Yet critics doubt its effectiveness, and claim it's just a cop-out for big business. Kevin Anderson, a climate change research scientist, told The Guardian, "Offsetting is a dangerous delaying technique. If we had gone to the limit of what we can do in our own lives then it would be a route to go down, but we've not even started to make changes to our behaviour."

Mike Mason, founder of Climate Care, the carbon offset organisation working with Land Rover, disagrees. "We've all got to climb Mount Climate Change and the greenies would like us all to put on our crampons and ice axes and go straight up the north face."

In other words, at least we're starting somewhere.

© Source: topgear
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