With all of our traveling, I sometimes get an environmentalist’s guilty conscience. We’re renting a Jeep SUV! And taking so many plane flights! And I still eat red meat!! This is against everything I supposedly stand for!!! I personally define values not as what we profess to care about, but rather as what our actions reveal us to care about. So… do I value sustainability or not?
For the past few years, I’ve been assuaging my guilty conscience with annual carbon offsets (guilt is a great motivator!!). I’m not sure that I believe it’s a perfect counter to all of my emissions, and really I think carbon pricing needs to be mandatory rather than voluntary, but I do believe it does good – it’s not just a modern-day indulgence. And if as many people bought offsets as buy Priuses, I think that’d be pretty awesome!
I’m also very particular about what type of offset I will purchase, because I think a lot of them aren’t effective or aligned with my values. I’ve settled on water filters for rural communities in developing countries, which offsets the carbon emitted from burning wood to boil water. Just as important, the project reduces the amount of time people (often women/girls) spend gathering wood, preserves local forests & biodiversity, and reduces negative health/economic/quality-of-life impacts of either burning wood indoors (soot impacts) or drinking contaminated water (illness impacts). Some projects I won’t invest in are renewable energy projects & landfill gas capture in the US – I think these should be mandated by law, not funded with offsets, and often they’re economic anyway.
Our 2018 Carbon Footprint
With the help of my Google calendar (to check travel history) and my favorite carbon footprint calculator, here’s where I stand this year. It’s inexact, but I figure it’s a reasonable estimate:
Air travel is always my arch-nemesis… But road trips were a big factor last year, too. Maybe Bryan and I can do more train travel in Europe? But I’m pretty resigned to having a big carbon footprint this year, and figure I’ll just have a lot to offset. Water filters, you can count on my support!!!
Bryan joined in the exercise this year, too. He had a larger footprint, about 50 tons. He took more flights than I did, and also chose to offset indirect impact from services like rent paid and hotel costs.
But we’re both pretty low-footprint for where we live, I think because we don’t own a car and mostly got around by bike or Caltrain last year.
If you’d like to calculate to calculate your carbon footprint and offset it
- Calculate your carbon footprint
- Purchase offsets here (or wherever else you’d like, but I like Native Energy!)
- Feel good about it!
You can get super detailed like I do, or you can just enter your zip code, number of people in your household, and household income, and the calculator will give you an average number. And if you’re open to sharing, please post your footprint in the comments on this post!
Happy Offsetting!!
