Are Flight Offsets Worth It? - The New York Times

Are Flight Offsets Worth It? - The New York Times

Ask NYT Climate

Are Flight Offsets Worth It?

A lot of them don’t work and some might even be harmful. But there are things you can do if you really have to fly.

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Q: Should I buy offsets to cover my air travel?

In recent years, many airlines have phased out the little box encouraging you to “offset your flight’s emissions!” on their checkout pages. Perhaps because so few customers took advantage of them, or perhaps because research has shown that many offset projects are ineffective or worse.

But last we checked, people are still flying. A lot. And the planet is still warming. A lot. So you may still be wondering: Should I offset my air travel? If so, how?

What are offsets, exactly?

A carbon offset is a credit that you can buy to make up for your emissions. So if you fly from New York to San Francisco, releasing around 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you can purchase an offset, funding a project that will remove or store that same amount of carbon dioxide elsewhere, often by planting or preserving trees.

At least that’s the idea. But many scientists object to the principle, on the grounds that we need to sharply reduce emissions, not just try to cancel them out.

“Offsetting is a misnomer,” said Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project at the University of California, Berkeley. “It creates a fiction that you can fly and emit greenhouse gasses and just pay for these cheap credits and it erases your impact.”

Last year, an estimated $1.7 billion of carbon credits were issued worldwide, according to an analysis from the global accounting firm KPMG.

OK. But do they work?

Companies are working on ways to improve the credibility of carbon credits. But Dr. Haya has been studying offsets for more than 20 years and so far, she said, the results have been grim. “Most credits don’t represent the amount of emissions reductions that they claim,” she said. Others have had no measurable climate benefit at all.

That’s because measuring the carbon captured by, say, planting a new tree is hard. Would that tree have been planted anyway? What happens if that tree later burns in a wildfire?

John Sterman, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the MIT Climate Pathways Project, compared carbon credits to the magical healing elixirs of the Old West. “I could put anything into that bottle. And it isn’t just that it might not work — it could be downright harmful. That’s where we’re at with carbon offsets,” he said. “They’re fooling people.”

In order for an offset to be legitimate, Dr. Sterman said a project’s results must be verifiable, immediate and durable. They must also be “additional,” meaning they wouldn’t have happened without funding from the offset. Very few projects, he said, meet all of these criteria.

The aviation industry seems to be catching on. United’s chief executive has called the majority of offsets “fraud,” and the head of sustainability at Delta has said the company had “shifted away” from offsets. Both companies have committed to sustainable aviation fuel(which has its own set of challenges) and other means of decarbonization instead.

What are the alternatives?

The best solution, according to the experts: Fly less.

And when you do fly, choose economy. Since premium seats take up more space, passengers in first or business class account for up to four times the emissions of passengers in the back.

On the rare occasions she flies, Dr. Haya has committed to donating $1,000 per ton emitted to environmental organizations, such as Unite to Light, the San Francisco Estuary Institute and others. “It helps me sort of understand the impact of my choices,” she said.

If you decide to take this approach, there are lots of ways to make your climate donations count.

Instead of purchasing offsets, Dr. Sterman has invested in reducing his everyday carbon footprint by adding insulation and solar panels to his house and buying an electric car. “It may seem like it’s more expensive to do that or more difficult, but it’s really not,” he said. “Because the money you’re wasting on offsets isn’t really doing any good.”

Voting also matters, said Lauren Gifford, associate director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center at Colorado State University. And, she said, it’s important to tell your representatives that solving climate change matters to you.

Carbon offsets are “basically a permit to pay to pollute,” Ms. Gifford said. “And what we need to do is not pollute.”

Have a question for reporters covering climate and the environment?

We might answer your question in a future column. We won’t publish your submission without contacting you, and may use your contact information to follow up with you.

Susan Shain is a reporting fellow for Headway, a section of The Times that explores the world's challenges through the lens of progress. More about Susan Shain

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