The bipartisan Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests released an extensive report today calling on the Senate to consider tropical forest preservation as a central necessity in the climate bill in front of Congress.  The group suggests that solving the climate crisis will be “nearly impossible without urgent

Friends of the Earth U.S. released a new report today calling the use of international carbon offsets a “dangerous distraction” that could lead to climate disaster if relied upon too heavily as the U.S. Senate returns to debate energy and climate policy later this month. 

Offsets are a centerpiece of the Waxman-Markey energy bill that passed the House of Representatives in June, and are likely to appear in the Senate version as well.

The Friends of the Earth report warns that the U.S. must avoid the use of international carbon offsets, in which U.S. industries can skip making costly investments to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions by sending money overseas for clean energy projects in developing countries.  The theory is that these international investments will translate into equivalent reductions at the fraction of the price it would cost to change our ways here at home. 

Only about a third of the climate-damaging carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in North America is offset by carbon-removing activities, a government report said.

According to the new U.S. study, North America released 1,856 million metric tons of carbon into the air in 2003 -- 85 percent from the United States, 9 percent from Canada and 6 percent from Mexico.At the same time, growing vegetation and other sources took in about 500 million metric tons of carbon.

Planting trees in Uganda to offset greenhouse-gas emissions in Europe seemed like a good idea - until farmers were evicted from their land to make room for a forest.

The Scam of Global Warming Is That We Pay Others For Our Complacency
The most destructive effect of the carbon offset trade is that it allows us to believe we can carry on polluting

George Monbiot, The Guardian (UK),  Jan. 22, 2006   

[A] study published  last week in Nature showed, to everyone's astonishment that plants produce methane, a greenhouse gas. . . But while this study does nothing to threaten global warming  theory . . . it should shake our  confidence in one of our favourite means of tackling it: paying other people to clear up the mess we've made.