|
Fighting Global Warming Abroad
The fight against global warming is a long and difficult one. The sources of carbon dioxide emissions are vast and varied with production, energy creation, transportation and deforestation all contributing to global warming. The United States alone is responsible for nearly 20% of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions, despite being only around 5% of the world's population. These staggering facts have led to a push by many environmentalists and government officials for a strategy to reduce and ultimately eliminate carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades. On a national level this can be done in a variety of ways. Through conversion to solar power, wind power or other forms of natural energy creation, emission of green house gases could drastically be reduced. While this seems like a straightforward and viable option for trying to combat global warming, the application of this strategy is very difficult. Environmentally friendly conversions would be very expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars on the national level. This hefty price tag is met with a great deal of opposition from U.S. corporations who do not want to take on the financial burden of reducing carbon emissions. In the past few years an alternative solution has been devised, which involves reducing carbon emissions abroad to offset environmental damage done by U.S. corporations. This practice of fighting global warming abroad has appealed to many environmentally aware parties, but has not gone without a great deal of controversy as well.
U.S. companies have chosen to fight global warming abroad by investing large sums of money in programs designed to fight deforestation in developing nations. Fighting deforestation is key to helping the environment and reducing global warming. Tropical rainforests are being destroyed in various countries across the globe, such as Brazil and being replaced with agricultural and cattle farms. This process has contributed more than 15% of the total carbon emissions each year, a figure that is comparable to that of the United States. By contributing to efforts to end this deforestation, U.S. corporations can offset most, if not all of the carbon emissions that they release into the atmosphere. This process is referred to as purchasing carbon offsets. Purchasing carbon offsets appeals to many corporations, not only because of its environmental advantages, but also because of the financial benefits. Experts calculate that an investment of $60 billion dollars in anti-deforestation efforts would equate to $110 billion dollars of domestic investment in environmental technologies. To U.S. corporations this creates an obvious economic appeal; they are able to boast of reducing carbon emissions, without having to actually reduce any of the pollution that their corporations create directly. Many government officials, aware of the difficulty of trying to pass anti-global warming legislation also endorse the process of buying carbon offsets. They acknowledge that, while it may not be the permanent solution to global warming, it is a cost effective option that will have a positive effect on the environment.
The rationale associated with the purchasing of carbon offsets abroad is highly criticized by some environmental organizations. It is widely accepted that there needs to be efforts to stop deforestation across the globe, but Greenpeace, Friends of Earth and some European conservation groups do not agree with the use of carbon offsets. The fact that carbon offsets mitigates costs is irrelevant to these groups; they believe that it is not really a solution; it is instead simply a way for big businesses to buy their way of confronting the environmental issues that they have created. These organizations would prefer that U.S. corporations take responsibility for their emissions on a domestic level, which would play a much larger role in reaching the ultimate goal of eliminating carbon dioxide emissions and significantly reducing global warming.
|
