Qantas: Greenwashing climate change scam?

Hi,

Flying Geoff's airline. Noticed signs inviting me to give Qantas some more money to relieve my conscience about destroying the planet by flying in one of their polluting planes. They'll buy a tree for me. Hold on! The passenger is paying for the CO2 the airline emits?

That's not how it is supposed to be. Whose carbon footprint is it?

The official line: "At Qantas we are concerned about the issue of climate change and are committed to ...blahblahblah...We are pleased to offer you the opportunity to join us in reducing the ...blahblahblah... From now on, you can choose to fly carbon neutral by offsetting your own share of flight emissions with just a small contribution."

Now here's the sting: Qantas gets all the glory for reducing emissions, and the poor, suffering passenger gets to pay for it. But under Kyoto, those emissions aren't calculated as part of the passengers' footprint. They are part of the airline's footprint.

So, while other companies buy carbon credits to offset their emissions, Qantas kindly makes it an 'opportunity' for passengers (who already had the option through anyone of half a dozen sites online.

“This is a great achievement for the Qantas Group and for travellers," enthused the Minister for Climate Change, Malcolm Turnbull. To add tragedy to the comedy, Qantas staged a piece of corporate theatre: "To launch this initiative, the Qantas Group will offset all travel with Qantas and Jetstar worldwide tomorrow on FlyCarbon Neutral Day," said the Minister.

One day! Qantas will be carbon neutral for only a single day. Did you get the impression that it had made flying 'carbon neutral'?

Well it hasn't. Qantas is offsetting the travel of its own staff. That's it. Less than 1% of seats will be offset by the airline. The rest is up to the passenger.