ResponsibleTravel.com has stopped offering a carbon offset programme for travellers.
The company was one of the first travel organizations to introduce carbon offsets in 2002.
The concept involves offsetting the amount of carbon emissions created by air travel by inviting travellers to pay for the planting of trees or other actions that reduce carbon elsewhere. Carbon emissions contribute to global warming.
“We believe that the travel industry’s priority must be to reduce carbon emissions, rather than to offset,” said company founder Justin Francis in a statement on the ResponsibleTravel.com website. “Too often offsets are being used by the tourism industry in developed countries to justify growth plans on the basis that money will be donated to projects in developing countries.”
Francis said he agreed with a report by the organization Friends of the Earth, which called carbon offsets a “dangerous distraction” that create a “medieval pardon for us to carry on behaving in the same way or worse.”