9/13 Diverse Voices Lecture

Carbon offsets are incentives for companies to lower their carbon emissions, and in turn help fund their projects and other energy-sustainable practices. That being said, one of the major issues with this idea is that companies spend their offsets elsewhere and continue to be unsustainable - regardless of being more expensive. If I was a senator of California, I would work on trying to create the most ethical project possible, while keeping California at the top of the world in terms of sustainability. While this project may be very efficient for the government to implement, only large corporations have a say in what is happening, leaving the general public out of loop. Additionally, nothing is being done to relieve areas of California with high pollution (usually people in poverty), and the areas that need the cleaning up the least are getting it. I don't believe the bill that requires California to lower their emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 is feasible, because the state is still debating on a method that would be most effective to achieve this. The REDD offsets program has received lots of backlash from the public, keeping it from its full effectiveness - when the public does not agree, it is very difficult to make progress with something.