Society ‘needs the right chemistry’

Carbon offsetting schemes are all well and good, but do little to change the way people live day-to-day, argues Stefaan Simons. In this week’s Green Room, he says instead of wasting money on short-term solutions, attention should be focused on developments that can really deliver a low carbon future.

But, paying away the guilt over carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions does little to change our actual behaviour and will not help save the planet from the very real problem of rising emissions and global warming.

So what can and should we be doing?

Carbon offsetting does little to get to the heart of the problem but it does reward those who are working hard to reduce their carbon footprint.

You could argue that it has an important role to play in dealing with those emissions that can’t or won’t be eliminated, at least in the short to medium-term.

BBC