Fatal Flaw: No one in government is thinking that the citizen emissions need to be offset. Governments are moving to clean up internal emissions, but no one is looking at citizen emissions and unless this is done, we are in a lot of trouble when it comes to reducing emissions.

Municipal governments are being presented with the idea that the air is now a broken infrastructure, and that like road and sewers, needs to be maintained at cost. Cities are already dealing with their internal emissions reduction schemes but need to realize that the public has no direct incentive to offset their own emissions. It costs money to offset emissions and because of accumulated atmospheric GHGs we have to do it. It is unavoidable. My company ran a crowdfunding web site to see if the public would know that it has to clean up its own emissions and did not have one person fund their own offsets. This means that governments will have to step up for two reasons. The honor system for offsetting does not work, and cities need to protect their assets. It would seem that asking people to clean up their own emissions is like asking each person to look after their own water quality or their own roads- we would not want to do it for lack of real standards.

It is time for governments to realize that the air is an infrastructure, that it’s broken, which is an emergency situation, and that public funds and policy to protect it means offsetting greenhouse gases and pollution for the public. Until governments remove this bottleneck int their thinking when it comes to society, we will not be able to reliably reduce our accumulated emissions and those are the ones that are killing people locally and far away for many reasons.