All this is perhaps much closer to home than we realise. The scheme that
Sara mentions - whereby individuals can buy the 'right' to use polluting
transport - was the brainchild of a entrepreneur called Mike Mason and
director of the Carbon Storage Trust (CST) - details at http://www.co2.org/
CST are a "non-profit making trust" that plant trees - thereby fixing
carbon - to supposedly offset emissions from car/air travel. They buy land
for forestry where it is cheapest - you can guess that Africa figures high
on their list . The sponsoring company behind all this is called CST
Management Ltd which then manages the land for maximum profit. If the idea
takes off as predicted then CST Management Ltd will make a serious amount of
money.
The advisory board for CST Management Ltd includes WWF and every
corporation's favourite NGO, Forum for the Future (Jonathon Porritt, Sara
Parkin and Paul Ekins).
The idea of CST occurred to Mason while completing the MSc in Environmental
Change and Management at Oxford University's School of Geography. I remember
him talking about the idea then (this was in 94/95 and I was on the same
course) and thinking that no one would be sufficiently stupid to think that
this would work or sufficiently cynical to put it in to operation. I was
wrong.
All the more important to ensure that 'environmental' Masters degrees being
taught at geography departments are more critical.
I also heard this morning that our dept are offering travelling scholarships
for undergraduates. Courtesy of Shell.
Fraser MacDonald
School of Geography
University of Oxford
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|