CO2 emissions, offsetting and the car insurance company

It appears to me, as a car insurance company researcher interested in all aspects of the motoring industry, that the green revolution is based on a premise of guilt. We love our cars, we love motoring, we love our foreign holidays, and the internet; fridges, TVs, games consoles and all those things that are turning the world into a polar ice-cap melted sea of fume choked droughts and flash floods - yet we can't quite give them up, can we?

Global warming, as a concept, has been in the mass sub-conscious psyche for some time now. The public are well versed in their understanding of "green" and "eco-friendly" notions. "Recycling" is now not just for newspapers (35 years ago my local scout troop collected newspapers and stacked them at the back of the scout hut to sell them to a recycling company - my first contact with green issues, but it wasn't called "green" - it was fund raising). Today, we recycle clothes, spectacles, hearing aids, cars, as well as the ubiquitous bottles, cans and paper. If you can be bothered, someone somewhere will probably recycle the thing you have finished with.

And there's the rub, you have to be bothered. I have been recycling for two decades now (if you count the newspapers at the back of the scout hut, it's a lot more), under my own steam, as a fully fledged adult taking responsibility for using an aerosol can in the early eighties, as soon as I had my own home, cooked family meals and did proper weekly shopping (not just student staples of pot noodles and hob-nobs) I started rinsing my glass jars, washing out the tuna tins and piling local newspapers ready for my bi-weekly trip to the dump, or "recycling centre" as it is now known.

When my new partner moved in, he fell foul of my naturally honed green instincts and put beer cans in the bin. I would "tut" viciously and make a bit of a pantomime about digging them out of the household waste. Then he started to over compensate and I would find tetra-pak juice cartons waiting to be recycled; yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, bread bags and all those other things that say can be recycled "if facilities exist", but don't in our local area.

Yet, despite all my efforts, I am being told I have a carbon footprint and I should be ashamed of myself! I drive a car, bad girl. I leave my computer on to charge the plethora of mp3 players that inhabit a family house. I sometimes leave the fridge door open whilst I make the school run sandwiches at 9 pm at night after a full day at work and I'm exhausted. And horror of horrors, I think I may have let an olive oil bottle go into the bin, because it was just too much hassle to wash it out! Oh I shall, be punished - my carbon footprint must now resemble that of a sasquatch.

Never fear, the newest innovation in the green garden of eco-friendly initiatives is C02 offsetting. Yes, I can buy my way out of the guilt.

I first heard of carbon emission offsetting when my car insurance company research took me to a Land Rover site to find out about 4x4's (shh!, we don't say that word in front of the eco-warriors, it sends them into a frenzy). It is alleged that 4x4 gas guzzling road monsters are the worst offenders for their sewage; with sky high carbon emission figures that are doctored for advertising purposes to make them appear a little greener than they really are.

But, people love their Chelsea tractors and so, Landrover launched their C02 Offset Programme to promote a green image to rival that of the sweetcorn giant.

It is, as their blurbs tells it, "Part of an integrated approach including investment in sustainable technologies and working with global conservation and humanitarian organizations."

They tell us that the C02 emissions of all new UK Land Rover vehicle sales will be offset for their first 45,000 miles. Meaning that Land Rover, with their hearts of gold (or green, surely), will help to fund an environmentally based project to help sustainable technologies and global conservation. Managed by Climate Care, the Land Rover Offset scheme invests in specific global projects such as hydropower in Tajikistan and China's wind energy programme. They say they will invest in three main project types:

Renewable energy: Replacing non renewable fossil fuels with renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
Technology change: Promoting the use of new technologies that avoid or reduce CO2 emissions.
Energy efficiency: Improving efficiency in energy consumption for communities and industry alike.

But, they won't stop making the totally un-green monster vehicles and they really hope you won't stop buying them.

Now, several little analogies spring to mind here - shutting the door after the horse has bolted - is one and - having your cake and eating it too - is another.

Carbon emission offsetting is merely a way of assuaging the guilt caused by making a howling mess of our beautiful planet. Throw money at it and see if it sticks is what this is all about. The corporate giants do not want to give up their colossal retirement bonus schemes and say, hey, our cars are terrible and we should stop making them to save the earth. No, they say, we shall put a bit of our profit into trying to make a minuscule difference to saving the polar bears who are already drowning. It isn't really enough, is it?

Gosh, I work for a car insurance company, I am not a dreadlocked, unwashed eco-warrior, I promise. And after all that, I had better go home tonight and take my recycling to the dump on the back of my push bike, eh? C02 offsetting by global corporations - an anodyne solution to a catastrophic problem - I'm not a fan really!

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