Carbon offsetting becoming good business(The Straits Times 2/2/07, World)

In recent times, "Environmental Conserservation" has been the buzz term on everyone's lips, regardless of politicians or common folks. Definitely, it is reassuring to see that efforts are put in to find the best methods to conserve and to match the global notion to "Save our planet". We might not have realised but the notion had been around for the past decade or longer and had been spread through many different mediums, for example campaigns and media. Just in Singapore, we had the "Clean and Green" campaign, which went on for several years, the "Pollution-free" day, when people are strongly advised to take public transport in a bid to reduce pollution from vehicles, and the "Smoke-free zones", which was implemented last year, prohibitting people to smoke in public areas, except for the limited smoking zones specially allocated to them. Cartoons were also used as a medium to educate the young on this notion. An example is " Captain Planet". This cartoon depicts the adventures of 5 teenagers, all from different parts of the world and from all walks of life, who dedicated their lives on environmental conservation. They each received the powers of Wind, Water, Fire, Earth and Heart respectively, and when these powers combine, they summon a superhero called Captain Planet.
In these way, this cartoon is spreading the message that as long as everyone work together, the destruction of our Mother Earth can definitely be avoided.
Through these various ways, people all over the world will be inculcated with the idea of environmental conservation. However these efforts are mere talks. The real cost of Environmental Conservation can amount to figures that people may not be able to imagine. Just in Singapore alone, the government had already invested an estimate of S$2billion into researches of water and environmental technologies, which include the cleaning up of sewage, toxic waste, reducing everyday pollutions from vectors like vehicles, fossil burning for fuels, and etc. Moreover, even the costly "green" cars which run on either electricity or hydrogen gas are only in their initial research phases and are not so much ready to be put into practical use. Our local government has introduced the installation of a hydrogen gas tank in cars as an alternative to petroleum fuels. This will reduce the pollution levels but due to the fact that people will have to travel all the way up to Jurong Island in order to refill the tank, puts people off the idea.
Now with companies getting people to pay in order to offset their carbon pollution incurred on the environment, it has presented environmental conservation researches with a funding that comes from not only the country's annual revenue, but also from the public directly. Undeniably, this will give a boost to the efforts on Environmental Conservation but there is always two sides to a coin.
Concerns have been raised on this act by companies. Arguments had stated that such acts are more of a bane than boon to our global notion. Concerned parties fear that this will mislead people to thinking that it is alright to pollute the environment so as long as they contribute to the fundings for the related scientific researches to save our planet. Possibly, this is the dangerous thinking that will destroy our Mother Earth. Therefore, i feel that these companies and related organizations should reach out to people and emphasize that carbon offsetting is merely a temporary effort to aid the finding of viable environmental conservation solutions, and the best solution to put an end to our environmental woes would be to avoid and minimise our individual pollution.
In short, this would be a critical action plan to put forth, especially when our climate is facing major changes, with global warming becoming increasingly serious. It was reported in the news on the 2nd of February that in the past year, our climate had a rise in temperature of approximately 1 degree Celsius, which resulted in the melting of icebergs at the poles and the consequential floods all over the world.