Carbon Offsets and My Big Footprint

Gregory Heller

First thing you should know is I'm a bit of an eco-geek. I've been talking about my carbon footprint for a few years now and can remember when it was more likely to cause blank stares than start conversations. But then we learned about An Inconvenient Truth, a new island was discovered after part of Greenland's ice sheet melted, and Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize. Now, those same people who were inclined to walk away from me at parties are talking about reducing their energy consumption and offsetting their own carbon footprint.

Why? We all know that the Climate Crisis has entered the mainstream with "green" issues of basically every major magazine on the newsstands, news organizations regularly covering strange weather, climate change and even presenting special multi-part series on our planet in peril, many presidential candidates pushing major climate related plans, and some travel sites even starting to offer carbon offsets for individual flights. In the last few years, more than a handful of organizations and companies have sprung up offering to offset your carbon footprint.

All the while I've been tallying my carbon footprint based on my air travel, and 2007 was a big year for me. Nearly 70,000 miles covered (or about 10% shy of the circumference of earth). I've traveled for business, family, and pleasure – 36 legs in all – and have calculated the associated carbon emissions to total about 28,400 pounds or just over 14 tons. Of course my total carbon footprint is larger and includes my household generated carbon, consumer generated carbon and automobile generated carbon emissions. On that last note, I don't drive very much, and personally don't own a car, but do have the guilty pleasure of riding vintage motor scooters every once in a while. I bought a Terrapass earlier in the year to more than cover my girlfriend's car (which I do use sometimes) and figure it would also probably cover my scooter and motorcycle riding as well as minimal car share use. (I'm a member of both Zip car and Flex Car due to my bi-costal tendencies, but now they've merged so I have access to vehicles in New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and a number of other cities.)

2007 wasn't my first year with a big Carbon Footprint. 2006 was probably pretty close. To make amends for my 2006 travel I bought a stand of 1000 trees through Trees For the Future and bought a Terrapass to account for much of my air travel. The trees should remove 25 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere for about 35 or 40 years. Unfortunately I later learned that the affect known as albedo (or absorption of solar energy by the earth) can in some respects cancel out the benefits of tree planting. What is a globe trotting, guilt-ridden eco-geek to do?

To offset my 2007 carbon emissions (even though the trees might already be doing it for me) I'm buying more offsets. I recently read about 3 reputable carbon offsetters in GOOD Magazine. After reviewing the websites for MyClimate, Atmosfair, and Native Energy I decided to go with Native Energy and buy 15 tons of offsets in the form of Renewable Energy Credits or RECs. RECs are earned by renewable energy projects and could be sold to carbon polluters over and over again. Through Native Energy though, the RECs my offsets fund will be retired by Clean Air Cool Planet. Native Energy is certified by Green-E, an independent consumer protection program for the sale of renewable energy and greenhouse gas reductions. Another thing that I find really cool about Native Energy is that they support distributed energy generation like wind turbines on farms and methane energy projects on farms. Both help support smaller farms which has an added environmental benefit of maintaining open space and diverse agriculture as well as support food security through this diversity.

Instead of simply buying 15 tons of Wind Builder Offsets, or Methane Energy Offsets, or a split of both, I decided I would buy 8 Tons of Wind Builder, and 7 Tons of a 50/50 split between Wind Builder and Methane projects. Native Energy has profiles of all of their projects with detailed descriptions on their website. MyClimate and Atmosfair also profile the project they support and this transparency and commitment to supporting carbon offsets that would not have otherwise happened is why these three companies were sited in two reports (one from Clean Air Cool Planet) that came out in 2007 as reputable carbon offset companies. Mind you, many environmentalists, as well as those with their heads still firmly planted in the tar sands, will say that selling carbon offsets is like the selling of medieval indulgences by the Church. Plenty of people have countered this view. I am going to steer clear.

So I figure my total carbon footprint may be over 15 tons. I buy 15 tons from Native Energy for about $180 and trust my trees to do the rest. Hopefully this coming year, I'll be able to reduce my footprint a little through less travel, but I am pretty certain that I will still have to do some offsetting.

Image by aka Kath, used via a Creative Commons license.