Since I'm really not doing much good for the environment by hopping on a plane all over the world, I thought it would be good to balance out my carbon footprint -- enter 2people.org, a cool site that I've contributed content to in the past.
They have a page dedicated to buying carbon credits. Interestingly, one of the biggest companies that does this, TerraPass didn't make the "nice list. " (They're trying to stay off the "naughty list" by writing a rebuttal.) They estimate that my Honda s2000 generated 8,510 lbs carbon dioxide this last year, and that my trips on airplanes coming up 13,546 lbs of CO2 (from 692 gallons of jet fuel -- just for me!). They're asking ~$100 to offset this footprint.
CarbonCounter.org (one of the US offset suppliers on the "nice list") estimates my footprint for the same criteria as 24.5 metric tons of CO2. That's 54,000 lbs. Slight disparity from TerraPass. They're asking ~$300 to offset this footprint.
NativeEnergy.com (also a US solution from "nice list") estimates my footprint as 18.365 tons of CO2. Interesting. They also said my total miles traveled is 1,000,034,798.03, which I kind of doubt. They're asking ~$230 to offset this footprint.
I could go on all day. I'm gonna let it stew some and maybe read te full report on these vendors, pick one, and go with it. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
Turns out that RMI has an article released about 2 weeks before my post on the compairson of carbon offsetters:
ReplyDelete"With an abundance of certification standards, however, it can be difficult to determine which one meets your needs.
A good resource for wading through these options is "The State of the Voluntary Carbon Market" (PDF) published by New Carbon Finance."
RMI's article is here:
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/amorylovins/20/making-sense-of-carbon-offsets.html
New Carbon Finance article is here.
http://www.newcarbonfinance.com/download.php?n=NCF_2007_07_VoluntaryCarbonMarket.pdf&f=fileName&t=NCF_downloads