In November, the Democratic-led House spent about $89,000 on so-called carbon offsets. This purchase was supposed to cancel out greenhouse-gas emissions from House buildings — including half of the U.S. Capitol — by triggering an equal reduction in emissions elsewhere. Some of the money went to farmers in North Dakota, for tilling practices that keep carbon buried in the soil. But some farmers were already doing this, for other reasons, before the House paid a cent. Other funds went to Iowa, where a power plant had been temporarily rejiggered to burn more cleanly. But that test project had ended more than a year before the money arrived.
There was ample warning that the House leadership might be wasting taxpayer money. Republican leaders suggested waiting for the GAO to complete a report this spring on the effectiveness of carbon offsets. The House’s Chief Administrative Officer — Daniel Beard — defended his decision to go ahead and spend the money anyway:
Beard argued that the plan has gone through all the required steps. Companies such as Ford and IBM use the Chicago Climate Exchange, he said, and he is confident that the money will go to beneficial projects. “Why wait?” he said. “Global warming is not going to wait, why should we wait?”
It now turns out — as seemed likely when the purchase was made — that this ‘investment’ won’t make a bit of difference toward reducing global warming. Interestingly though, the directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange have made 15 contributions to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in the last year. All but one of those came from former Carter and Clinton White House official Stuart Eizenstat.
