Recently, Kit wrote about carbon offsetting, calling it wishful thinking at best – at worst, greenwash. In particular, he was looking at tree planting as a method of offsetting carbon emissions, because it’s the most popular method by far. Just this morning I passed a truck making deliveries to a shop around the corner from me, proudly proclaiming in letters on the back that were almost as big as the company name, "We are a carbon neutral company."

This got me thinking about the mathematics of carbon neutrality. As I understood it, every year your company assesses it’s CO₂ production, estimating how much carbon it’s flinging into the atmosphere, and pays another company to plant trees that will "offset" the carbon emitted by absorbing the gas in that way that plants do – through photosynthesis. I found myself wondering how long this process takes – for instance, if I produced X tonnes of CO₂ last year, so I need to buy Y trees to counteract that… how long will it take those Y trees to absorb X tonnes of CO₂. The missing variable, T, doesn’t seem to be widely publicised – and there’s a huge difference between this year’s emissions being absorbed in one year than being absorbed in 40 years.

It turns out, thanks to  some research this morning, that this is actually accounted for. T is one year: therefore, in theory at least, your purchase of a certain number of trees will offset the production of – for example – the carbon emissions of a particular motor vehicle for the rest of it’s lifespan. It’s a very wooly theory, of course – the vehicle will become less efficient with age, for instance; some species of trees do not produce a net reduction in their local CO₂ levels for the first eight years of their lives; maintaining a sustainable forest makes significantly less impact on CO₂ than planting new forests; and as forests reach maturity (30-60 years, depending on the species) they become less efficient at impacting CO₂ again. There are lots of factors that aren’t taken into account, but at least my "missing variable" is.

It turns out that factoring in time isn’t a problem, because tree planting is really quite cheap. A hundred pounds or so shelled out when buying a new petrol-driven car (that’ll see pretty average use) pays for enough trees to be planted that – assuming that they are left alone during the entire working lifespan of the car and are not cut down or (worse yet) burned – the carbon emissions of that car are "neutralised." Good for you. You can feel a happy feeling about yourself.

As an optional aside:
I’m somewhat reminded of the Catholic Church’s practice of indulgences. It is the belief of Catholics that sins must be confessed to be forgiven, but that because humans are such naughty, sinful creatures, it’s pretty likely that they’ll have unabsolved sins at the time of their death. Mortal sins (the really serious kind) and concious rejection of God have you sent straight to Hell, but if you’ve merely got a few venial sins (the not-quite-so-serious kind) under your belt when you die, you’ll have to go to a place called Purgatory where you’ll be punished… er… I mean cleansed… of your remaining sins so that you’re pure when you finally get to enter Heaven. Catholocism also teaches that the time that you (or somebody else – even somebody already dead) need to spend in Purgatory can be reduced (let’s call it "offsetting") through penitential acts: usually prayer, but in the past, deliberately bringing punishment on oneself was perhaps almost as popular (fasting, wearing uncomfortable clothing, etc.). Prior to 1567, if you’d committed a sin – and you had the money – you could even buy your way out of it, purchasing an indulgence from your priest that offset, for example, several hundred days worth of penitential prayer without ever getting down on your knees or picking up a rosary. Some divisions of the Catholic Church still approve of giving money to charity as an act of penance, but "buying your way out of penance" by giving to God is now seen as wrong (I wonder how many "sinners" asked for their money back after being told that their indulgences, purchased before 1567, were no longer valid?).

That diversion aside: my research isn’t all fun and games, though. While initial evidence seems to indicate that carbon offsetting through tree planting genuinely can, done right, theoretically, kind-of reduce atmospheric CO₂ by an equivilent volume to that output by the sinner… er, I mean, offender (wow; it’s easy to accidently take a metaphor too far, isn’t it), the bigger question for many people is: what about global warming?

And that’s where it all falls down. All the studies seem to indicate that while tropical forests (you know, like the ones in Brazil that we just keep felling) cause a global cooling effect, forests in temperate areas have no net effect on global temperatures. It turns out that despite them removing carbon compounds from the air, they also provide a dark and (of course) light-absorbing surface which actually helps to trap heat close to the planet’s surface. Worse yet, evergreen trees (of the kind that are so popular in European tree farms) and plantations in cold areas have an even worse effect, absorbing the sun’s heat that would otherwise be reflected – at least some of the year – by snow.

We’re going to have to see a lot more long-term studies on carbon offsetting before we get a consensus on what it’s actually doing for us as a species, but it should be evident that it certainly doesn’t do everything it claims to do, or at least that it isn’t so clear-cut as it could be. As a way to make yourself feel less guilty for polluting the atmosphere, though, it certainly works a treat, and modern carbon offset companies help to make it a lot less effort than repeated Hail Marys or reducing emissions in the first place.

If that’s all a bit serious for my blog, take a look at CheatNeutral. CheatNeutral apply the carbon offset model to relationships – if you’ve cheated on your partner, pay CheatNeutral £2.50 and they’ll give you a certificate with which to apologise to your partner. They promise to invest your money in helping to ensure that other people don’t cheat on their partner – either by keeping them single or by keeping them faithful, so you can relieve the guilt of cheating by knowing that you’re helping to ensure that other people don’t get cheated on too.

Tags: religion

I find it amazing that people look at the chaos and the beauty of the world and somehow come to the conclusion that there is a god. I know that sounds like it’s backwards, but I mean it. The other day I was watching a spectacular sunset. The sun hung low in the sky and painted a picture of orange, pink, and red across the wispy clouds, and I found myself thinking, "Wow; that’s absolutely beautiful. How cool is it that we’ve evolved to be able to appreciate that?" People have been appreciating the colours of sunsets for thousands of years, of course, and it’s no less amazing since we came to the realisation that the Earth is not the centre of the universe (what a stir that kicked up amongst the devout!), that the picture painted by a sunset is just a result of atmospheric effects, and that our ability to enjoy things which are aesthetically pleasing is the result of a long line of evolutionary changes in our long-distant history. I didn’t need to think about any of those things to enjoy that uncommonly pleasing moment during my walk home from work. Most folks don’t . You could probably just about put a man on the moon without thinking about the relativistic implications of non-geocentrism, never mind the living of your day-to-day-life.

A friend of mine wrote a post in her blog (sorry; she’s protected it, most of you can’t read it) a little while ago about how she’d come, over the course of her life, to her current beliefs. This kicked off a few dozen comments including one from me, promising that I’d write something similar in the near future. This is it.

My upbringing, for the most part, was very much secular. My parents seemed to be careful not to try to overly influence me or my sisters in any particular religious direction, giving us a childhood which was, to all intents and purposes, agnostic, with as little bias as they could manage. This is best expressed, I think, through an anecdote: I remember quite vividly a discussion that took place between one of my sisters – quite young at the time – and my mum. My sister came into the kitchen where my mum and I were sat and asked, "Where do rabbits come from?"

"Well," said my mum, in her most matter-of-fact way, "Do you remember how we were talking about how mummies and daddies make babies?" At this point, she had assumed that this was going to be an elaboration of the "birds and bees" talk they’d had some time ago. Except about rabbits and… er… rabbits.

"No, no, no," my sister replied, "I know all that. I mean: where did the first rabbits come from?" This was, of course, a whole different topic.

"Where did the first rabbits come from?" my mum repeated, "We’re not completely sure; but there are two main schools of thought about it. Some people think that rabbits came from other animals which were a lot like rabbits, but not quite; and they came from animals that were not quite like them, and so on, until eventually; a long long time ago, every animal came from tiny little animals that were a lot like germs. Some other people think that rabbits – and everything else; even people – were created on purpose by someone super-powerful, who they call ‘God’."

I was impressed. This was a basic summary of the widest possible views of many evolutionist and creationist philosophies, summarised into a couple of sentences that a precocious primary school child could comprehend. My mum had successfully condensed the beliefs of over 90% of the world’s population into something that made sense on any level; and, better yet, she’d done so without needing to superimpose her own beliefs on the top.

My sister, evidently, was also impressed. She stood quite still for some time, contemplating what she’d been told and visibly going over these two concepts in her mind. Eventually, she piped up, "I think that rabbits came down from the sky like bogies from God." And that was that: she’d been given the space to make up her own beliefs from the evidence given. Undoubtedly these beliefs have changed over her years (I’m pretty sure she no longer subscribes to "Mucusism"), as she’s had the chance to be exposed to more evidence from both these major camps, and probably from some systems of belief that don’t directly agree with either one or the other. I’m sure if she’d asked my mum what she believed, she’d have got an honest and reasoned answer. As it happens, it’s rather irrelevant.

We’re all born atheists: we have no concept (or the mental faculties to comprehend) of deities, and therefore we have no belief in them. Later; at the first point we discuss religion, or question the possibility of a supernatural creator, we become momentarily agnostic, and then start to form a set of religious beliefs of our own. This is based on the evidence we are presented with, and our young and malleable minds can easily be shaped by well-meaning individuals like our parents and teachers. My primary school was typical of others in our area and at that time: we sang hymns, had prayers, even had "scripture" lessons (which were later replaced by religious education when the school adopted a more secularist attitude), and were exposed to other elements of Christian mythology. Like most rational people of any age, I came to understand children’s’ stories like Noah’s ark to be exaggerated (at best), and probably just metaphorical or entirely imaginary. However, primary school did expose me to a peer group laden with children already indoctrinated into a belief system that I found to be complicated, confusing, and un-necessary. Arguments for the existence of a supreme being, woven into stories and songs, challenged me with questions that I didn’t yet have the philosophical depth-of-thought to be able to contradict. Simply put; I wasn’t sure what to believe. And that’s just fine.

There’s no problem with agnosticism, especially amongst children (who, lets face it, are given a simplified model of the world in all senses anyway – a necessity for their survival and a means to provide them with valuable information without having to resort to unanswerable questions). But amongst a group of 10-year-olds who haven’t yet learned to question the "facts" given to them by their evangelistic parents, it’s difficult to be the one to say, "I can’t see any reason that God has to exist at all." Many of the most popular arguments for the existence of God are so simple that a child can explain them, and the reason for that is simple: they’re not very good arguments (it’s sad that so many theists continue to use these flawed arguments into the adulthood, unwilling to listen to their faults). Nonetheless, it’s not easy to defend an agnostic viewpoint when you’re unready for the kinds of arguments you’ll come up against. In hindsight, these (rare) playground discussions would have been easier had my parents brought me up as an atheist, rather than simply areligious. However, that – I think – wouldn’t have given me the open-mindedness to actually investigate these beliefs that others held, which, in turn, has ultimately made me surer of my current beliefs.

By the time I was 14 I’d formulated a well thought-out set of philosophies in my mind; primarily an atheistic one, with sufficient unanswered questions and seemingly equally-viable explanations to be agnostic on particular issues. It was at about this point that I realised that the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient deity that is concerned with human behaviour was completely ludicrous to me. I had no difficulty seeing the similarities between belief in a god and belief in, say, Santa Claus, or with the fact that while neither is entirely disprovable, this does not mean that existence and non-existence are equally likely. It’s about this point that I became particularly fascinated with religion in general. I tried to learn as much as possible about as many as possible, and I began to love hearing about what people believed and why. Content with my own model of the world – with its few unanswered questions themselves not requiring God (and certainly not the God described by any religion I’d ever come across, with all their hypocrisies and illogical arguments) to fill in the blanks – I turned to trying to understand others.

I read a lot about religion and about philosophy. I became familiar with the major arguments used by theists for their beliefs, and by atheists for their disbelief (although I’ve always found the latter to be less necessary, just as arguments against the existence of anything are less necessary by scientific theory – the burden of proof comes from the hypothesis of existence). And everything I read confirmed more and more for me how illogical and unnecessary this image of a god was, most of all a god anything like those that the major religions subscribe to. And, gradually, over the coming years, I came to iron out many of the other quirks in my beliefs (by, for example, finding myself a determinist without tripping over any of the usual, often theistic in nature, arguments against it).

The only significant change to my religious views of late has been a reduction of my tolerance for the activities of others as a result of their religion. While I’ve previously been very open to other people’s beliefs, not caring what other people believe (however wrong I think they are), I’ve more recently begun to see how dangerous religion can be when used as an excuse for some awful things. While I don’t believe it’s true to say that most wars are started over religion, it is true to say that religion provides an excuse for such behaviour. And somehow, lately, religion has become something that’s taboo to argue against.

In a legal case a few years ago by a San Diego student against his school – who had banned him from wearing a t-shirt that carried an anti-homosexual message at school – the student made his case not on the grounds of freedom of expression but on the grounds of freedom of religion. Had he tried under the former, he would undoubtedly have failed, because while it’s okay to express whatever opinions you like, the court would have said, it’s also okay for schools to maintain order and a civil atmosphere. But under an argument of religion, he was far more likely to be untouchable – in the current socio-political climate, no judge wants to be seen to infringe upon somebody’s religious views. Small cases like these help to enshrine (hah!) religion into a status where it can’t even be criticised, even where it’s used as justification for some of the most disgusting acts of genocide, war, hatred, and terrorism. It’s a big scary world, and while it might still be as big and scary without the fundamentalist theists, at least we’d have removed from people an irrational excuse for their actions. And meanwhile, the majority of people still brainwash children with disputable beliefs that they haven’t got the cognitive abilities to question.

I’m grateful to my parents for giving me the chance to be whoever I wanted to be.

So; there’s a 10-minute summary of how I came to the beliefs I currently hold. Perhaps in another couple of decades I’ll write it again. In the meantime, I’ll happily argue the non-existence of God with any of you until the sun goes down, but I’d still prefer to hear what it is that you believe, because, for the time being, religion still interests me far more than fighting over it does.

Further Reading

Some stuff other people have written, that I think you should read:

• Andy’s written a very long piece about his beliefs, how he came to them, and his thoughts on religion. Then he wrote an addenum. Then he wrote some more. Go Andy!

• Now Ruth’s joined the club, and written about how she came to believe in God.

• JTA’s said a little, too, about an experience in his life that helped him confirm his belief in God.

Tags: religion