I'm back from my work-imposed moratorium over the last week-and-a-half, and when going through recent emails to make sure I hadn't missed anything, came across an online survey on what students think and experiences.

This one, the Universum Graduate Survey, administered by Universum Communications, instead of promising iPods or free driving lessons and whatnot, offers something different instead: a carbon offset.

I nearly glanced over the section explaining the details without quite realizing what it was - that's how unexpected something like this was, even to me. This is their explanation:

"Global warming caused by the greenhouse effect and CO2 is an increasing problem that according to many will lead to severe problems in the future if not stopped. We give you the opportunity to slow this development down by filling out the Universum Graduate Survey.

"For every student who chooses to participate Universum will remove an average student's weight of 75 kilo of CO2. Please click here to get more information"

It's a bit odd because it uses the average weight of a student (75kg apparently) to calculate how much carbon to 'buy' up, but there really isn't any kind of correlation between individual weight and carbon weight. If anything, I think it's probably an arbitrary number that they've picked out of the air and simply found some way to link that to being a student.

The information that they've provided would suggest that they offset through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which is buying up carbon permits from industry, and then simply not using these permits. While this idea itself is fine in principle (leaving the question of emissions trading itself aside for the moment), the ETS has been plagued by problems over its effectiveness - including the recent assertion that far too many permits were distributed, letting the price fall and thus removing the entire financial incentives behind the scheme.

On the whole, I guess it probably can't hurt too much. At the end of the survey though, it asks you to choose between the iPod, free travel option or the carbon offset option - which sounds like an opt-out clause for them as I gather most respondents will still go for the free stuff. Still think it's a really odd idea though...