The closing credits to Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truthfinish with the statement: "A Carbon-Neutral Production".
Now, I'm a big fan of Al and his movie but he said himself that he has delivered his famous presentation more than 1,000 times around the world, so he must have clocked up many more thousands of air-miles in the process. Then there's the ground transportation, hotels for the crew, and all of the carbon emissions you would associate with any film production. So how can the documentary be carbon-neutral?
Well, it's simple. It's done via a process called carbon offsetting. It works on the premise that an entity which produces a lot of pollution can buy credits from an entity which does not. In the case of An Inconvenient Truth, Paramount Classics and Participant Productions, which produced the movie, hooked up with a Native American energy company called NativeEnergy to offset 100 per cent of the emissions produced during filming and post-production activities. Voluntary carbon offsetting is in vogue: at the recent Fianna Fáil Ardfheis the Taoiseach announced that the Government would offset the emissions from public service and ministerial air travel.
Even ordinary individuals like you and me can get in on the carbon-trading fun. Let's say you're planning to fly to your holiday home in Barbados, but feel bad about the 1.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions that will be produced by the flights? Feeling bad is for mugs! Log on to any number of websites that trade in salving eco-guilt - oops, sorry, I mean trade in carbon offsets - and for €40 you can neutralise the flight's emissions by buying into "new environmental technologies, projects in developing nations and forestry plantation". They'll even send you out a personal certificate to hang on the wall so you can show your friends just how green you really are. Now off you go to Bridgetown and enjoy your holiday, you big, green, lean eco-machine! It's surely only a matter of time before you will be able to buy "green" petrol that has a built-in fee for offsetting the emissions the petrol produces. SUV drivers across the land rejoice: no more guilt at the petrol pump.
Trading carbon emissions is very big business indeed and it is estimated that the voluntary offset market will be worth €450 million by the end of this decade. It is frontier stuff for the moment - almost entirely unregulated - but let's leave that aside for the moment. If carbon offsets are here to stay and we all agree that they are a good idea, then we can assume that the industry will be regulated eventually. But the bigger question is whether carbon trading is a good idea in the first place. Or is it all simply hot air that allows individuals, corporations and governments to delude themselves and others that they are doing something about climate change while, at the same time, disguising the lack of real progress on the issue. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to reduce carbon emissions. Is paying someone else to reduce their emissions the same thing? The reality is that offsetting is a licence for us to continue (or worse, intensify) our carbon-intensive lifestyle with impunity, leaving that nasty eco-friendly abstinence to others. Let them plant trees, switch off lights and start compost heaps. I'm busy living.
The environmentalist George Monbiot likened carbon offsetting to the middle-age practice of trading indulgences. The perverse logic back then was that you could buy your way out of purgatory by buying indulgences from people who had a surplus of good deeds and so could afford to sell you some of them. Actual penance for your sins - kneeling, praying, fasting, doing good deeds - well, that was for poor people. If you were, in modern parlance, cash-rich, you didn't need to bother yourself with such undignified grovelling. Sin was an income generator and subject to the laws of supply and demand. Carbon offsetting is much the same, with climate sins being traded instead of regular ones. Impure air rather than impure thoughts.
Let's get back to the Taoiseach's green announcement at the ardfheis. Every year around St Patrick's Day the government gets a collective kicking for sending ministers off around the globe to represent Ireland at various hoolies. Nobody is seriously suggesting that they should abandon this ambassadorial role; traditionally we were just jealous that they were getting out to warmer climes while we had to stay here in the wind and rain watching tractors pull floats down main street. But now, armed with our new eco-awareness, we can kick them over their carbon footprint instead, which is a lot more fun.
Offsetting the emissions of ministerial flights is a cunning ploy by the Government in the run up to an election in which the Green Party is threatening to take a big chunk of the uncommitted vote. It also means that from here on, the Government can swat away criticism about the emissions generated by high-flying ministers. But why stop there? There is no end to the possibilities which offsetting provides the Government with. Ministers can now happily dispense with the nonsense of being driven around in hybrid cars and use a fleet of Hummers instead. They can get rid of the radiators in Government Buildings and replace them with coal-burning open fires. Back off, mister, we're offsetting!
When the Hummer pulls up outside your door and the minister looks for your vote, ignore the offsetting guff. Ask him instead by how much our carbon emissions are being reduced. Oh, you mean, they've actually increased by 140 per cent since 1990? Now that's not very good is it?