Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?

I'll be honest, I haven't been to up-to-date on what buying carbon credits meant and I'm not entirely sure what my stance on it is yet. I feel like Denis Hayes's comparison of this to the Catholic Church selling indulgences is a bit strong, but the article does have good points about how buying and selling carbon credits could actually be detrimental to the attempt to stop global warming.

Michael R. Solomon, the author of “Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having and Being” and a professor at St. Joseph's University, said he was not surprised by the allure of the carbon-offsetting market.

“Consumers are always going to gravitate toward a more parsimonious solution that requires less behavioral change,” he said. “We know that new products or ideas are more likely to be adopted if they don’t require us to alter our routines very much.”

But he said there was danger ahead, “if we become trained to substitute dollars for deeds — kind of an ‘I gave at the office’ prescription for the environment.”