Boykoff: Front Range first! Climate contributions in troubled times.

The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) wrapped up last weekend, and over 60,000 participants returned home. Some — like me — returned to the United States in time to recognize Thanksgiving week with family and friends. 

As I center gratitude while reflecting on the state of our world, I contemplate how I traveled over 9,000 miles to and from COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to do my part in helping increase policy needed collective engagement to significantly alleviate the negative impacts of climate change. Everything counts: aviation emissions comprise 2.5% of overall human contributions to climate change. 

I write this in my personal capacity, yet as the Designated Contact Point for the University of Colorado, after COP30, I received an email from UNFCCC with “information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions offset opportunity.” The UNFCCC communication offered participants use of their UNFCCC-certified COP 30 calculator tool for “a participatory experience that increases climate awareness, encourages responsible choices, and strengthens the user’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality for the event.” The calculator didn’t account for emissions associated with my stay in Belém, what I ate, how I got around and to/from the Denver and Belém international airports. 

Nonetheless, I learned that I generated 2,600 pounds of carbon emissions in travel, and the COP30 calculator then determined that a payment of $17.65 sufficiently offset it through their programs in solid waste management, which captures methane emissions to generate renewable energy. These projects include socio-environmental management plans, an environmental education initiative and a social inclusion plan for waste pickers. I paid it and received a certificate that I voluntarily offset GHG emissions generated by my in-person COP30 participation.

Valid critiques of voluntary carbon offset programs are often categorized in two ways: how they are used (to address justice, equity) and what is the “quality” (to effectively address emissions with transparency, enforcement and clear accounting) of the projects. 

These voluntary carbon offsetting schemes are distinct from large-scale compliance carbon markets. Compliance markets are UNFCCC mechanisms like “cap and trade” where companies in a given sector (e.g., oil extraction) that emit less than their “cap” (or limit allowed) “trade” (or sell) their remaining carbon credits to companies that need credits to get below that cap, comply with the law and avoid penalties.

Voluntary carbon offsets intend to compensate indirectly for GHG emissions we’ve deposited into the atmosphere by paying into projects that remove or reduce GHG emissions somewhere else. These voluntary, largely individual decisions aggregate to an active voluntary carbon market of about $4 billion swirling around for corporations, governments, organizations and individuals to more readily achieve “net zero” practices or “carbon neutrality.”

There are important and ongoing concerns and wariness:

• Many projects reinscribe rather than root out inequalities (overestimating benefits to local communities, greenwashing rather than accurately describing project efficacy);

• Credit can go to projects that would happen anyway (not meeting “additionality” criteria);

• Offsets may merely provide emotional/moral “salve” on our consciousness as “false solutions” that displace more direct, tangible actions.

Together, there is a seductive power that these voluntary and easy payments can effectively (yet ineffectively) forgive our climate-contributing sins without much expense.

Amid these fraught, opaque monitoring and verification challenges, there are more tangible ways to creatively work here in Boulder to strengthen our neighbors and neighborhoods right here while indirectly reducing GHG emissions. We can establish commitments from major local Boulder employers to offset their employees’ travel emissions through carbon offsetting payments for insulation, heat pumps and induction stove purchases and installations for low-income households (e.g., residences in mobile home parks) right here in Boulder County. Effectively, we can improve efficacy concerns as payments visibly and clearly benefit local households. 

We cannot simply offset our way out of climate change. While local Boulder programs like these alone won’t solve climate change, they can take important steps forward. I’d rather spend $17.65 or more here in Boulder and on the Front Range while we work to improve larger-scale carbon offset programs as well. More community-centered, clear and concrete approaches here in Boulder County and the Front Range can help address vulnerability and resilience to climate change-related events for the benefit of neighbors living at the forefront of climate impacts.

This is a biweekly sustainability and environment column authored by Max Boykoff. Max is a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder, though the views expressed here are based upon his scholarly expertise and research/creative experience as well as personal views and should not be considered the university’s official position on any specific issue.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.