ABSTRACT
Ask Tom Arnold, chief environmental officer of carbon offsets retailer TerraPass, why his company likes supporting new renewable energy projects in addition to projects that just avoid emitting greenhouse gases at pre-existing facilities, and he’ll tell you the answer is fairly simple: ‘A big part of our job is explaining offsets to consumers,’ says Arnold. ‘Telling people that they have an opportunity to do good is a much more powerful message than telling them they have a chance to do less bad . . . Sit in a room teaching eight people about how carbon offsets work and you can see when they get it,’ he continues. ‘People get the iconic image of a wind turbine’ (Arnold, 2006).
