Blasted for Excess, UN Responds with Carbon Neutral Promise
by Stacy Feldman - Dec 12th, 2007
in
The United Nations -- the most cumbersome, bloated bureaucracy on the planet and bastion of embarrassing jet-setting excess -- has vowed carbon neutrality!
It's starting by offsetting the carbon footprints of the representatives of the twenty UN agencies, funds and programs who are attending the two-week climate conference in Bali. The offsets will cost about $100,000, accounting for the 3,370 tons of carbon dioxide that will be emitted during their air travels. The money will be invested in the Kyoto adaptation fund to help poorer nations adapt to climate change.
The UN joins three nations who made a pledge in Bali to go carbon neutral. New Zealand. Norway. And Costa Rica, which will hit the target first in 2021.
The UN Environment Program went a step further. It says it will be 100 percent carbon neutral in one month.
Meaningless? Not necessarily. Think of it more as a barometer of progress than a silver bullet. The head of the UNEP certainly does:
"This is not peanuts," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environmental Program. "We are talking about a whole institution committing itself to a concept that five years ago some people dismissed as science fiction."
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