Both COTAP and our partner the Clinton Development Initiative’s Trees of Hope project were recently mentioned in a Washington Times piece entitled “Bernie Sanders goes carbon-neutral as Hillary Clinton breaks pledge.” We should note here that COTAP is a public charity, and that it’s independent and non-political. That said, we feel this article has an unnecessarily negative spin on it (this Oct. 2015 piece from CNN is just as bad).
Here’s why. Though the article makes an interesting point or two, it is substantively misleading about the offsetting process: it’s not appropriate to offset emissions of a given scope or case (i.e. a presidential campaign) until after all of the emissions have occurred and have been measured. In other words, isn’t possible for any candidate’s presidential campaign to break a carbon neutrality pledge until after the election is done – in November 2016.
