Activists from the Camp for Climate Action paid us a visit today at our head office in Oxford, to publicise their view that 'carbon offsetting = red herring'.
They were invited inside for a cup of tea and an amicable discussion on the role of carbon offsetting in tackling climate change. We commended their efforts to encourage more government action, and were pleased when they acknowledged that our work is a genuine effort to tackle climate change and had many strong arguments in its favour.
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The action comes at a time of widespread misunderstanding of carbon offsets. Climate Care employees took the opportunity to discuss with the protestors their arguments and put right a number of misconceptions about Climate Care and its work.
During the discussion it emerged that not only did the group have very little evidence that offsetting stops people reducing their pollution, but that they had not read the recent Parliamentary report from the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) that stated "we found little substantial evidence to support the view that toffsetting encourages ethical carelessness".
So we presented the groups representative, Leo Murray, with a copy of the report! We hope that its conclusions - reached after an extensive set of hearings and written evidence from both pro and anti offset organisations - will make the activists rethink their opposition to offsets: the MPs of the committee decided that credible offsets do reduce carbon and should be encouraged as much as possible.
