Rant FixCarbon? 50% Marketing 50% Denial 100% ********

I've written about this on my blog, but I thought I'd share the whole thing with the forum since I'm all pissed off and need people to read me vent. So, without further ado...

PS: I couldn't be arsed to redo all the links in the post but they are all in the original article.

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FixCarbon (http://www.fixcarbon.com) is a search engine (a front in fact) run by Ask.com. It claims that 50% of the revenues produced will be donated to ‘carbon offsetting’. Its tagline reads: “The easiest way to reduce your Carbon footprint”.

Wow, that’s amazing. Isn’t it?

No, it’s pure unadulterated ********.

Why’s that then?

I'm glad you asked, but first...

Disclaimer: I’m in fact a sceptic and claim no special knowledge but I do know ******** when I see it, and FixCarbon is covered in the stuff.

Let’s get get something clear. You’re not going to do anything to prevent ‘climate change’ by sitting on your arse searching for porn on the Internet. It ain’t gonna happen, and anything or anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. Worse still, those that believe in such things represent the worst of what is quickly becoming the most dangerous case of denial in history.

Here’s are some snippets from the website’s ‘How It Works’ page:

Well, in this slightly over familiar and simplistic writing style lets just take some random figure the marketing department came up with during their lunch break and imply that “every search” generates random amount of carbon offset, which equates to a rough amount of “real world” offset.

So, presuming for a moment my daily commute to work was 50 miles and covered by car alone, I’d only have to search for "the ask.com marketing department are a bunch incestuous arsehats" around five or, at most, ten times and I would have successfully offset my whole entire commute for that day. Wow, that is amazing. This whole making **** up thing is real easy, and fun too. Win Win!

“Holy, ****! It’s that easy! Wow, if we all use FixCarbon we’re be saving the earth in no time.”

Note the typo, clearly lots of thought and preparation has gone into the creation of FixCarbon. Like, a whole lunchtime.

Seriously, this whole thing is written like a script for Barney and Friends.

“Here, have some morphine. It’ll make you feel better. Mmm, morphine….”

Of course, if all this fluff wasn’t bad enough it has become abundantly clear that carbon offsetting and similar schemes are fundamentally flawed, and often criminally fraudulent. The Financial Times published a report which discovered “widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions” and this report is hardly alone. Channel 4 news discovered similar issues, and the examples of corrupt and ineffective schemes are numerous.

George Monboit summed things up rather nicely in a column for the Guardian, where he compared carbon offsetting to the 15th and 16th century practice selling of ‘indulgences’, where people would pay priests in return for redemption from sins they had, or were going to, commit.

So, for example, you’d walk up to priest, tell them you were going to stab them in the face and they’d tell you it would cost you X amount of money to be forgiven for stabbing him the face - presuming he didn’t run away first.

Finally, Monboit put things perfectly at the end of his article - which you can read here - when he said:

The exact same must be applied to FixCarbon, which must rank as one of the most cynical pieces or Public Relations I’ve ever seen. If you must do something recycle more, car share or simply walk or use public transport but don’t, for goodness sake, think that by using a specific search engine you’ll become “carbon neutral”. It is a flagrant and cynical lie and everyone needs to know it.

 

Despite being a believer in global warming and doing what I can to reduce it, I agree, this is BS

 

Good idea however. Some dope will buy this and make this guy money.

 

Carbon Offsetting is a good idea, but paying someone to do it is a bad idea. It should be done by you or the company that produces that carbon.

Hence why I absolutely HATE the whole "Let's pay for Carbon Credits!" crap.

 

Yeah it's just ********, like that car insurers that makes your car eco friendly by carbon offsetting. The problem with it is people think it will save the world, they can buy a credit and they can waste as much as they want as usual, but it makes no difference at all to the carbon emissions.

 

Talking of BP stations, the ones with the solar panels on the roof, ever noticed that the amount of electricity generated (they have a display outside the door) never changes? it always appears to be around the 4 or 5 kw mark .. environmentally friendly my arse its just lip service to make the customer think that they are

 

The idea behind it have existed for many, many years.

People buy a clear conscience. This is why we have Christmas, right?

They think that money can change the world...

 

Amen, brother.

 

good call. complete BS

 

back in the darkest middleage you could pay the catholic church to make god forgive you your sins...

now you can pay some shady company money to make nature forgive you your lifestyle...

nice to see how humans advance....

but yeah... save the world by using fixcarbon.com instead of google to search for porn will save the world... well... that can really only be complete bs..