22nd February 2007

As an illustration of how emotive the issue of climate change is becoming a protest group called London Rising Tide occupied the head office of the Carbon Neutral Company (formerly Future Forests) on the day they had been invited to appear before the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change, which was being chaired by the Carbon Neutral Company.

The group claimed that. “Many people are now questioning whether offsetting allows some of us in the richer, developed world to carry on with our massively polluting lifestyles, instead of lowering our own emissions. Those who are buying offsets are often doing so with the best of intentions, but the fact remains that it’s a smokescreen that has to stop.”

In a press release they said. “If we compare the planet to a running bath, full almost to the brim with CO2, to offset CO2 emissions is like saying “I won’t turn off my tap. I’ll pay someone else £10 to pay someone else £2 to turn off their own tap.” The reality is that we need to turn off both, if we’re to have a chance of cutting CO2 emissions by 50% before 2016.”

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