ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS:ONE OF THE UK's ethically minded travel agents, Responsibletravel.com, is to scrap its carbon-offsetting facility.
The company, which was one of the first to offer its customers a way to reduce the environmental impact of their journeys, in 2002, has said ecological concerns are the main reason for the rethink.
“We believe the travel industry’s priority must be to reduce carbon emissions rather than to offset,” said its managing director, Justin Francis.
Offsetting has been a popular trend in the industry for more than a decade.
Travellers calculate their journeys’ emissions, then buy green or carbon credits from an ever-increasing array of tour operators and airlines.
The funds are used to plant trees in the equatorial rainforests of South America and construct wind farms in China, among other projects designed to reduce the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions.
Francis cited a recent report by Friends of the Earth that highlights the pitfalls of carbon offsetting as also having influenced the move.
“Carbon offsets distract tourists from the need to reduce their emissions,” Francis said. “They create a ‘medieval pardon’ for us to carry on behaving in the same way or worse.”
Responsibletravel.com’s decision is part of a groundswell of opinion that questions the validity of carbon offsetting.
Critics dismiss the schemes as a convenient and cheap way for travellers to assuage their guilt without cutting their emissions or making more fundamental changes to their lifestyles, such as flying less frequently.
Although some moves were made in the UK earlier this year to establish an initiative for quality assurance, the carbon-offset industry is largely unregulated. Schemes have also been criticised for their widely varying prices.
Globally, the airline industry accounts for significant contributions to greenhouse-gas emissions.
Its effects will be debated at the United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen in December.