By Richard Russel

Carbon offsetting focuses on compensating for greenhouse gas emissions advertently or inadvertently caused by people and organizations. In this system, when your actions release the pollutants, you adopt measures to control emissions some where else in the world to negate the effects of the pollution caused by you. Thus the total rate of emissions throughout the globe will not go beyond danger levels, and the environment will be protected from uncontrolled levels of pollution.

One way to work on carbon offsetting is to participate in community drives to clean up the environment, planting many trees in your area, or performing any activity that will help reduce release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Personal initiative is not always practical, and thus the carbon offset system was devised, in which people who believe themselves to be guilty of polluting the environment can contribute money to an organization to compensate the damage done to the atmosphere. Your money is then contributed by the organization to agencies running environmental projects.

Following the Clean Development Mechanism for carbon offsetting which is part of the Kyoto Protocol, industries and governments of the economically developed countries pay the developing nations for making sure that total emissions do not continue their upward trend.

Sceptics of carbon offset argue that it fails to deal with the basic problem of harm that is being done by you. In both carbon offsetting and carbon trading, you pay for the damage you caused rather than actually stopping it.

However, the proponents of these systems believe that monetary rewards in carbon trading are adequate to motivate firms to adopt greener methods of doing business. Likewise, carbon offset permits individuals to project themselves as eco friendly in their society and help in generating awareness about the problem. Many celebrities have embraced carbon offset and this has attracted other people to it. The system has gained tremendous success over the years, with many people.

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