Page 14 Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 21, 2019
SIR Elton John’s claims that
the Duke and Duchess of
Sussex’s private jet flights
were carbon neutral were
dismissed by Greenpeace’s
chief scientist yesterday.
The 72-year-old Rocketman
singer defended Harry and Meg-
han amid a furious row over
their use of private jets.
He revealed on social media that
he paid for the eco-warrior couple’s
luxury flights to Nice, saying that
he had made a donation to offset
their carbon footprint.
But yesterday Doug Parr of
Greenpeace said that ‘carbon off-
setting’ was not a solution to the
climate crisis.
He insisted: ‘Carbon offsetting is
not a meaningful response to avia-
tion emissions. Good works can be
done with cash out into offset
schemes, but it is no solution.’
Mr Parr’s comments came after
Sir Elton insisted Harry and Meg-
han’s return flights to the French
Riviera – where they stayed in his
and husband David Furnish’s
outcomes, but they are things we
should be doing anyway. But they’re
not taking out CO2.
‘In our world, where we need to
get to net zero CO2, they don’t con-
stitute equivalence.’
Sir Elton was the first celebrity to
leap to the couple’s defence follow-
ing criticism of their recent trips to
Spain and France, in which they
took four luxury flights in 11 days.
Their arrival in Nice came just
two days after they flew home by
private jet from Ibiza after a six-
night break celebrating Meghan’s
38th birthday.
The couple’s green credentials
have been questioned as campaign-
ers say private jets create far more
pollution than scheduled flights.
Sir Elton tweeted on Monday:
‘After a hectic year continuing their
hard work and dedication to char-
ity, David and I wanted the young
family to have a private holiday
inside the safety and tranquillity of
our home.
‘To maintain a high level of much-
needed protection, we provided
them with a private jet flight.
‘To support Prince Harry’s com-
mitment to the environment, we
ensured their flight was carbon
neutral, by making the appropriate
contribution to Carbon Footprint.’
American TV host Ellen DeGe-
neres also defended the couple,
posting on Twitter: ‘Portia [Ellen’s
wife] and I met Prince Harry and
Meghan in England to talk
about their work on wildlife
conservation.
‘They were the most down-to-
earth, compassionate people.
Imagine being attacked for every-
thing you do, when all you’re trying
to do is make the world better.’
Grammy Award-winning singer
Pink is the latest celebrity to rush
to the couple’s side. The 39-year-
old tweeted: ‘I’m happy to see peo-
ple coming to the defence of the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
‘The way people treat her is the
most public form of bullying I have
seen in a while. It’s out of control.
Let’s all be a bit kinder, huh?
‘Let’s show our children that it’s
cool to be kind.’ling tree-huggers, from Leonardo
DiCaprio to Sting, Kylie Minogue
to the Foo Fighters.
They started paying for small
forests to be planted across the
developing world. The big idea
was that these would then soak
up all the nasty carbon dioxide
being belched out by their favour-
ite planes, cars, and yachts, allow-
ing them to smugly continue fol-
lowing a luxury lifestyle without
damaging the planet.
That was the theory, at least.
Come 2006, Martin began to look
like he’d suffered an old-fash-
ioned rush of blood to the head.
It emerged that, in the four
years since the so-called Coldplay
Forest had been planted, at least
40 per cent of its mango trees had
already died.
Impoverished farmers in the
dusty countryside of Karnataka
State, where the saplings were
planted, began complaining that
they’d not been paid for labour,
insecticide, or spraying equip-
ment necessary to actually nur-
ture them.
Over the ensuing years, it was
reported that a hefty portion of
Martin’s surviving mango plants
had then burned down, releasing
dirty clouds of CO2 back into the
atmosphere and rendering the
entire project pointless.
The unfortunate affair, which
was widely studied, highlighted
what is now known among cli-
mate scientists as the ‘Coldplay
conundrum’. It refers to the phe-
nomenon by which well-meaning
public figures, who seek to adver-
tise their eco-friendly credentials- while simultaneously globe-trot-
ting – inevitably put themselves
at risk of ending up with a serious
dollop of egg on their face.
Just such a situation faced
Prince Harry this week, after
Elton John sought to defend the
royal eco-warrior’s recent private
jet journey to the South of France - one of four his family has taken
in recent days – by announcing:
‘We ensured their flight was car-
bon neutral, by making the
appropriate contribution to Car-
bon Footprint.’
So what exactly is Carbon Foot-
print and does it deliver?
The Basingstoke-based firm,
which allows concerned citizens
to ‘offset’ their personal carbon
emissions for a small fee, is run by
a husband and wife couple, John
and Wendy Buckley.
It’s a leading player in a rapidly-
growing industry which seeks to
provide a quick and easy means
for customers to feel like they are
combating climate change – with-
out having to do anything more
than write a small cheque.
To supporters, carbon offsetting
offers a pragmatic and relatively
hassle-free means for the public
to repair some of the damage
caused by their modern lifestyles.
It also allows celebrities (and roy-
als) to sidestep at least some alle-
gations of hypocrisy as they set
off on yet another ski, beach or
safari holiday.
Yet the industry is also the sub-
ject of fierce criticism, particu-
larly among environmentalists,
who see it as a highly-unethical
form of so-called ‘greenwashing’.
Friends Of The Earth have
repeatedly called offsetting a ‘con’
and Greenpeace have described
its methodology as ‘dodgy’.
The campaigner George Mon-
biot has dubbed carbon offset-
ting ‘pernicious and destructive
nonsense’, comparing offsetting
to the Medieval system of ‘indul-
gences’ via which wealthy people
could buy pardons from the
Catholic church to supposedly
atone for their sins, without alter-
ing their destructive behaviour.
Carbon Footprint were unavail-
able for comment yesterday, but
say on their website: ‘Carbon off-
setting is a way to reduce the
emissions that you can’t. It both
helps to combat global climate
change as well as caring for local
communities.’
But as Monbiot and many other
opponents see it, the only way to
prevent climate change is to stop
flying in the first place.
All of which meant that while
acknowledging the good inten-
tions, it wasn’t long before critics
began to argue that Sir Elton’s
claim that the private flight was
‘carbon neutral’ was nonsense.
Leading the charge was Green-
peace’s chief scientist, Dr Doug
Parr, who said carbon offsetting
was not a ‘meaningful response’
to flight emissions.
How, then, has such a lucrative
industry developed?A
T its most basic level,
carbon offsetting com-
panies use money paid
by clients (minus a
small fee) to finance a variety of
projects that take carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere, or prevent
it being emitted.
Some might plant trees (which
absorb CO2) in the UK and
abroad, others finance projects
to distribute energy efficient
stoves, or lightbulbs to the devel-
oping world.
One scheme financed by Carbon
Footprint repairs broken bore-
holes – which give communities
access to clean drinking water – in
Uganda. That means, in theory at
least, they no longer have to cut
down trees and burn them in
order to make fires to boil water.
Another pays for trees to be
planted at schools in the UK.
Beneficiaries have included Ivy-
bridge Primary, near Twickenham
Stadium, where nearly 1.300 sap-
lings were planted on the border
of a playing field last year, and an
unnamed school near the Hert-
fordshire studios where the new
Spider-Man film was made.
It was recently given 72 saplings
by Carbon Footprint client Sony
pictures (one for each day of film-
ing) to turn into a native hedge.
Projects may also support solar
energy or wind farm schemes, or
pay to protect threatened areas
of the Amazon rainforest from
logging. An auditing process thenestablishes how much carbon
each project has ‘offset’ each year,
for example by working out how
much CO2 an individual sapling
will convert into oxygen. Custom-
ers can then tailor their payments
accordingly.
Buy a Virgin Atlantic flight to
New York, and you will be told
that you are producing 0.96 tons
of CO2. For £7, on top of your
ticket price, a company called Cli-
mateCare will ‘offset’ those par-
ticular emissions.
ClimateCare is another big
player in the offsetting industry.
Clients are reported to include
David Cameron, in his days of
hugging huskies, and Emma
Thompson, the Hollywood actress
who recently flew First Class to
London from Los Angeles to join
Extinction Rebellion protests
against climate change.
Founded in 2007, it now puts
between £10million to £20million
a year into its projects.
Carbon Footprint – as favoured
by Elton John – is also doing well:Eco boss:
Sir Elton’s
f light was
not green
By Emine Sinmaz
and Arthur Martin
W
HILE touring the world to promote
Coldplay’s second album A Rush Of
Blood To The Head, frontman Chris
Martin found himself feeling guilty
about the environmental cost of his
private jet habit.
So the macrobiotic pop star announced that he’d be paying
for 10,000 mango trees to be planted in southern India, thereby
(allegedly) rendering the entire production of his hit record
‘carbon neutral’.
Fans could chip in if they wanted, via his website, paying
£17.50 to receive a certificate (printed on recycled paper) saying
that they, too, had paid for a mango tree.
‘This is the greatest idea that anybody has come up with
recently,’ Martin declared. ‘I hope everyone who cares will
become involved too. There’s nothing like trees: girls and trees
make the world go round!’
It was 2002, and climate change was fast becoming the most
modish cause celebre of the celebrity class.
So Martin’s scheme was duly copied by a host of virtue-signal-By Guy
Adams
Cash for carbon: Public figures,
from top, Chris Martin, Emma
Thompson and David Cameron
are said to be clients in schemeYesterday’s Daily MailOffset claim: Sir Elton John£15million palatial villa – were car-
bon neutral. The rock star said he
had offset the damage caused to
the environment by the two gas-
guzzling flights on a £15million Ces-
sna 680 Citation Sovereign jet by
‘making the appropriate contribu-
tion’ to an ecological company
called Carbon Footprint.
The firm encourages people to
‘offset’ the carbon emissions they
rack up by making donations to
renewable energy projects.
The return flight taken by Harry,
34, and Meghan, 38, from Farnbor-
ough Airport in Southampton to
Nice is estimated to have created a
carbon footprint of around six tons
- producing seven times more car-
bon emissions per person than a
return commercial flight.
However, Carbon Footprint only
asks for a donation of £6 per ton to
‘offset’ harmful emissions. It means
that Sir Elton could have paid as
little as £36.
Dr Parr added: ‘There’s no way
any current tech deals with the
load of CO2 you’ve released on a
personal level.’
He added: ‘These are good
schemes, and they have positive
ELTON: I PAID
FOR JET –
SO LEAVE
HARRY ALONE