Disney has become the latest in a long line of multinational organisations to finance carbon offsetting schemes, which campaign groups say fail to reduce climate change and instead create ways to avoid cutting emissions.
The company recently said they have spent $15.5 million in carbon offsetting schemes, including forest protection, reforestation and the destruction of industrial gases.
Sounds responsible, yes? The trouble is that carbon offsetting has become increasingly more controversial in recent years, and it's no longer a cut-and-dried environmentally responsible option for large companies. But then Disney isn't exactly the world leader in other areas, either - such as, um...women in film.
Carbon offsetting involves paying into a project that prevents carbon emissions from somewhere else or removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in order to compensate for your own emissions. The voluntary sector alone has ballooned in size over the past decade and was worth an estimated US $387 million in 2009. There is also a bigger compliance sector, which allows countries to meet carbon emission reduction targets more easily by offsetting their emissions.
Voluntary offsetting has become increasingly popular with companies but critics say it allows them to continue as normal instead of trying to significantly reduce their emissions.
'Companies should be doing all they can to reduce their carbon emissions through energy efficiency and adopting new processes. However, often the easiest thing to do is get a bit of green PR by buying offsets overseas and declaring themselves to be carbon neutral,' says Mike Childs, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth.
Read the full article at The Ecologist online here.