Travelport’s Top Product Exec on the Folly of Carbon Offsetting
Photo Credit: Contrails at a Munich airshow. Getty Images / Walter Bibikow
Skift Take
Travelport's Tom Kershaw was not shy with us about sharing how he feels about what is real and what is just a pure waste of time in the travel industry's efforts to be green.
Are carbon offset programs bad news? In many ways, believes Tom Kershaw, Travelport’s chief product and technology officer, making a case for more measurable and achievable ways to reach environmental goals.
Kershaw told Skift during an interview recently that offset programs are often abused and are usually cheap and easy answers to make people feel less guilty. "And cheap and easy ain’t the way out,” according to him.
He further mentioned that a lot of the offset dollars go to owners of forests or green areas to not cut down trees and there is proof that those dollars didn't really prevent anything.
“The offset dollars create an industry that makes money off of it, and for which I have huge distrust," he said.
"Also, it doesn't mathematically add up. Do we really know how many trees we'd have to plant to offset what's happening?”
An earlier European Union study supports Kershaw's position, reporting that 85 percent of of
