A management consultant who travelled 4,200 miles to attend a three-day sustainability summit has described himself as part of the solution to the climate crisis after spending forty-five seconds on a carbon offset application he installed between his second gin and tonic and the in-flight meal service.
Martin Henshaw, 52, senior partner at Deloitte’s Environmental Advisory division, purchased £127 worth of offsets through GreenBalance Pro whilst his return flight from London to Dubai was still taxiing to the gate. The transaction, he explained to journalists at the conference welcome drinks reception, had rendered his journey carbon neutral and possibly even carbon negative, though he admitted he had clicked through the explanatory screens quite quickly because his phone battery was running low.
The offset package, according to terms and conditions Mr Henshaw accepted without scrolling past the second paragraph, will fund a tree-planting initiative in Indonesia that began in 2019, ended in 2021, and involved considerably fewer trees than initially projected due to what the company describes as logistical complications. A further portion supports a community stove programme in Kenya which has been the subject of three separate fraud investigations, none of which have been concluded.
“I think it’s incumbent on all of us to take responsibility,” Mr Henshaw said, checking his emissions savings dashboard, which displayed a small animated tree and the message ‘You’ve saved 4.2 tonnes of CO2’. “Yes, I could have attended virtually, but there’s no substitute for face-to-face collaboration when you’re discussing solutions of this magnitude. And now that I’ve offset, I’m actually contributing to reforestation. If anything, the planet is better off because I came.”
When asked whether he had investigated which specific projects his money would support, Mr Henshaw confirmed that he had glanced at a map with several green pins on it and found it reassuring. He had not clicked on any of the pins.
Jennifer Okafor, an environmental economist at the University of East Anglia who has studied the voluntary carbon offset market for seven years, suggested that the ease of the process might be part of the problem. “We’ve essentially gamified absolution,” she said. “People are now three taps away from believing they’ve solved something their entire lifestyle is predicated on making worse. The apps are designed like food delivery services. Nobody reads the terms when they’re ordering pad thai either.”
Mr Henshaw’s company has pledged to reach net zero by 2040, a target it describes as ambitious but achievable given projected advances in offsetting technology and an expectation that the definition of net zero will likely evolve to something more accommodating. In the meantime, the firm has installed a Nespresso machine that takes compostable pods and introduced Meatless Mondays in three of its eighteen UK offices.
At time of publication, Mr Henshaw was selecting his meal preference for the return flight. He chose the beef.
