As more of us are now aware, there is a climate crisis occurring on our planet as a result of an over-abundance of carbon in our atmosphere…. in no small part caused by emissions such as carbon dioxide from our cars, power plants etc. Films like An Inconvenient Truth, or Home that I mentioned in my last post go into much more detail in outlining this global issue.
I just discovered this site: carbonfund.org, which provides really easy to use online calculators to help you calculate your carbon footprint, and offset it through a donation to them. They work with agencies to put your donation to work in off-setting the carbon you emitted through you actions, by planting trees or investing in renewable energy. A carbon offset represents a reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) somewhere else, like a wind farm in Texas or a reforestation project in Nicaragua, to balance out the emissions you cannot reduce.
I put my cross-country flight into their carbon calculator….. and it was only about $8 to offset, didn’t seem like much…. but then I included radiative forcing, which includes the fact that impacts are more at higher altitude… it took it to $25! I’m not shocked at the numbers, just the real impacts that are hidden to my normal perspective…..
And then I took the opportunity to offset all of my car driving for the year…. only $27. The crazy thing is that one trip in an airplane across the US was almost the same amount as all my driving for the whole year! Well, admittedly there’s a lot of miles in my flight, although still less than I drive in a year…. but because it only takes a matter of hours to fly, I never realized just how big my impact was!! Simply using my default measure of time, I completely underestimated my impact on the planet, and everyone on it….
I’m really grateful for this eye-opener on our true planetary impacts in daily life……. I really suggest checking the site out… and maybe taking a little corrective action now to help our beautiful planet get back on track 