Carbon Offsetting is Bull
Like a good many Canadians, I spent a summer or two in my late teens planting trees. Contractors generally pay by the tree.
People who buy a notebook computer from Dell have the option of paying into a fund that goes towards planting trees. Their rough calculation is that $2 worth of tree planing will offset the carbon resulting from your notebook. I call BS. First off, I have to wonder if they are including all the fossil fuels used in transporting the computers to the customer. Secondly, I wonder if they are considering all the fossil fuels used to take trees form nurseries to the plantation and to take college students into the wilderness and back. It makes more sense to me for businesses to find ways shrink their own carbon footprint rather than opting into these offsetting schemes. I actually have some university level education in forest management and I think the concept of natural regeneration needs to be part of the equation as well.
