In 1988, as floods struck Bangladesh and a heat wave swept across the United States, climate change became a political issue. Governments and businesses alike talked about how to stop it, or at least slow it down.

That year the think tank World Resources Institute and the energy company Applied Energy Services announced a novel idea that has been credited as the first example of a ‘carbon offset’: In order to make up for the millions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide that would be released by a new coal-fired power plant in the United States, the energy company would pay to plant 52 million trees in Guatemala. But the reality on the ground was more complicated.

Stan Alcorn visits Totonicapán, Guatemala and speaks with Roberto Antonio Alvarado, who planted the saplings that would be some of the world’s first carbon offsets. Additional producing by Dennis Funk. A Written in Air production.

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(Photo: Roberto Antonio Alvarado with one of the first carbon offset trees he planted. Credit: Stan Alcorn)