Tonight, I did something I've been planning to do for a while: I went carbon neutral. I tallied up my CO2 emissions, then purchased an appropriate amount of carbon credits from Ebex21. They in turn will put the money towards a native forest regeneration scheme in the Queen Charlotte Wilderness. The net result is that enough trees will be grown to absorb my annual emissions - and as a bonus, they'll be trees that I actually like, rather than boring old pinus radiata.
How much did this cost? Not a lot. I'd calculated my annual emissions at 7.5T a year, and that set me back a mere $165 - less than fifty cents a day. Not a lot of money to pay to end my contribution to a global problem.
The one hole in the calculations is this blog. I'd like to purchase an offset for it as well, so I can then become New Zealand's first accreditted carbon neutral blog, but that would require information about how much energy blogger uses to host it - and they're not exactly forthcoming. I'm continuing to make enquiries, but in the meantime, I'll just have to be satisfied that all the emissions on my end of the internet are covered.
Well done Idiot. I'll do the same as soon as I have a little spare cash.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'll second that. Well done; a great example.
ReplyDeleteIf blogger - Google - have any sense they'll take your request, scale it up and declare the whole of Google's operation carbon-neutral. Don't be evil is a good slogan. Do good is a better one. Says he, who is flying tomorrow. Hypocrite.
ReplyDeletePeter: Google is being surveyed as part of the fourth Carbon Disclosure Project, so maybe we'll be able to see something abouttheir emissions (and what they are planning to do about them) next month.
ReplyDeleteAs for flying, you can always buy an offset from somewhere like climatecare. If you fly British Airways, you can even get them to do it for you as part of the ticket price.
Good stuff indeed!
ReplyDeleteTake a look at
http://www.offsetmylife.com/
There's probably no end to how far we can go with this...
I think all the money going into these conscience-soothing schemes to buy trees would be better spent going to into a large slush fund to bribe and lobby American and Chinese politicians.
ReplyDeleteAnthony,
ReplyDeletenah, the means as well as the end is important... I think it would be a slippery slope.
PS ever seen the South park episode about the anti smoking-in-bars group??
If you buy climatecare or other overseas carbon offsets, it doesn't help reduce New Zealand's Kyoto deficit - see http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/about/kyoto-provision.html
ReplyDeleteIt does help if you buy offsets in New Zealand. Good on you Idiot for choosing to invest in restoration of New Zealand's fragile biodiversity.