Starting something is tough. For months Jane encouraged me to meditate. She found it helpful and thought it would benefit me. I agreed. But when the opportunity came to learn how to meditate– and there were many opportunities – I just didn’t feel like it. One morning I agreed to her instruction. Since then I meditate first thing every morning.
This installment is for those of you who have not started calculating your carbon footprint. Now is the time. Too busy? Don’t feel like it? Afraid of finding out what your footprint really is?
If you are serious about starting a low carb(on) diet, you’ll need to know how much you weigh. I weigh 7.8. carbon tonnes. I know. I’m a long way from reaching 1.4 carbon tonnes per year, the target that we each must work towards to prevent runaway global warming.
The good news is that I’m on the right path. It’s going to take me a few years but I’ll get there through planning and a deep desire to ensure a stable biosphere for my niece and nephew and their descendants. I know you too are serious about making a difference. To make a difference, you need a plan. Every good plan needs a beginning. We begin by knowing where we are and where we want to be.
What do you need to get started? Just a half an hour of your time. Start now. If you simply can't right now, open up your calendar and mark at time to do so. Here is a list of carbon calulators:
Zerofootprint
I use this one. It’s very comprehensive. You can choose Toronto, Ottawa, Seattle, etc.
Carbon Friendly Solutions
Vancouver-based
Al Gore’s Carbon Calculator
US-based
Carbon Fund
US-based
Online carbon calculators make it easy for you. Prior to beginning, collect your utility bills which will help you ascertain your annual heating and electricity output. If you don’t pay these bills (or don’t have records of them) the calculator will provide you with an average estimate. I know I discussed carbon calculators last week. I bring it up this week because I believe it’s really important. About half of Canada’s carbon emissions come from individuals through their homes, travel and diets. A calculator will help you plan and strategize your personal carbon reduction in the years to come.
We have until 2020 to make a significant dent in our carbon emissions. Now is the time to begin if you have not already. When you do so, tell your family and friends. Spread the word! Issue challenges. My goal for 2009 is 6 tonnes – about a 25% reduction from 2008. I challenge everyone out there to reduce their carbon footprint by 25%. And even if you fall short of that goal, you will still be on the right track.
Carbon Offsets
I visited Canada’s PlanetAir, a Gold Standard carbon offsetting company, to confess my global warming sins and invest in renewable energy technology. Offsetting 7.2 tonnes costs $300. I am now on PlanetAir’s online monthly program, investing $25 over the next 12 months. When offsetting your greenhouse gas emissions, I encourage you to consider Gold Standard which supports sustainable technologies. The sooner these technologies are made available to us, the easier it will be for each of us to produce 1.4 tonnes of carbon per year.
Garbage Challenge
After three months of reducing our landfill-bound waste, Jane and I are left with one bag to deposit in our garbage bin. The only blip in the campaign was our trip to the BC’s Lower Mainland where the cities of Surrey and Langley do not compost their organics. We brought as much of the land-fill bound garbage home with us but had to leave the organics for obvious reasons.
The garbage challenge was surprisingly easy. It simply forces us to be more mindful of our packaging and what we toss out. Jane and I now limit packaging that cannot be recycled which means that bulk purchasing is part of our weekly shopping ritual. We are even reusing old packaging. All of the non-recyclable materials are soft plastics, although the City of Toronto now accepts plastic shopping bags. Jane and I reuse and then save the bulk plastic bags to take during the City’s Environment Days. The bag of garbage we toss out will take 1000 years to deteriorate. Jane and I are committed to producing as little of that as possible - only four bags of landfill-bound garbage per year.
In the News
Americans seeing the light on carbon tax
Ah, the irony.
Showing posts with label Carbon Offsets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carbon Offsets. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Earth Day and Cuba Notes
Earth Day! – April 22
Mark on your calendars. Click here to find an interesting Earth Day event near you!
One simple action is to help Doug Hart in his campaign to get Canadian Tire to sell recycled Toilet Paper. Here’s his message:
“According to Greenpeace, if each household in Canada replaced 1 roll of toilet paper cut from ancient forests with 1 roll of recycled toilet paper, we could save 47,962 trees in a year.
I noticed Canadian Tire sells wall high piles of toilet paper, none of it recycled. After more than a month of emails to them, asking “why do you not sell re-cycled toilet paper,” I have no real reply, only policy gobble de gook, how they have green policies, and care about their customers feedback, and thank you for my email.
I thought perhaps some of your good readers might also send them an email, with this simple question to customerservice@canadiantire.ca asking, “Why do you not sell recycled toilet paper?” Maybe if enough of us do it, they will respond.”
Let’s bombard Canadian Tire with “Why do you not sell recycled toilet paper?” messages and see how they respond.
Cuba Notes
Jane surprised me with a vacation to Cuba for my birthday. While the purpose of the trip was to collapse on a beach, which we did wholeheartedly, I was curious to know how Cubans were doing on the sustainability front.
Cuba is of interest to anyone who wants sustainable practices. With the collapse of its major trade partner - the Soviet Union - in the early 1990s, Cuba had to also contend with (and still does) a tightened trade embargo from the U.S. With limited fossil fuel and food, Cuba went from industrial agriculture to organic farming in about four years flat.
With a little help from Venezuela in recent years, Cuba has some cars back on the road but it continues to produce most of its own food - something it didn’t do during the heyday of the so called ‘green’ revolution. During that time, monocultural state farms dominated Cuban agriculture. The crops, such as sugar, were traded to places like the USSR. Cuban received most of their food from abroad.
To be blunt, aside from a trip to Havana and information from the tour guide, I did very little probing on the organic front – given that I spent most of my time on a beach and had trouble even communicating the word ‘vegetarian’ to the wait staff (the so-called vegetarian corner in the buffet was laced with beef and bacon).
So my observations are of an eco-conscious western tourist confined to an all-inclusive resort. You can only imagine the dichotomies with which I was faced, which in a nutshell was: all-out food and booze fest in a land of rations and conservation.
At the resort, conservation measures were folded into every day life in this strange community of rapacious Canadians. Key cards were used to turn on lights, forcing people to turn them off before they left. All lights were compact fluorescents (however outdoor lights were left on). All toilets were dual flush (while beach showers were left running). Electrical cars buzzed up and down the extensive grounds (carrying bloated guests from the buffet to the beach). The food was for the most part local (with great quantities of it left on plates to be tossed). I often wondered what the Cubans, who survive on $15 Canadian a month, thought of us.
As for the flight (the night flight revealed only a few lights, hardly defining the towns below), Jane and I will offset our carbon output through Planetair’s carbon trading scheme. Our money will go towards investments in renewable energy. We will continue to eat all our food on our plates, not stuff ourselves, turn off lights, and walk whenever we can.
In the News
Pressure mounts on farming powers amid food crisis
This is a highly serious matter that calls to question biofuels and shines a light on the population crisis.
A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice
And then there’s the effect of global warming on food production.
Mark on your calendars. Click here to find an interesting Earth Day event near you!
One simple action is to help Doug Hart in his campaign to get Canadian Tire to sell recycled Toilet Paper. Here’s his message:
“According to Greenpeace, if each household in Canada replaced 1 roll of toilet paper cut from ancient forests with 1 roll of recycled toilet paper, we could save 47,962 trees in a year.
I noticed Canadian Tire sells wall high piles of toilet paper, none of it recycled. After more than a month of emails to them, asking “why do you not sell re-cycled toilet paper,” I have no real reply, only policy gobble de gook, how they have green policies, and care about their customers feedback, and thank you for my email.
I thought perhaps some of your good readers might also send them an email, with this simple question to customerservice@canadiantire.ca asking, “Why do you not sell recycled toilet paper?” Maybe if enough of us do it, they will respond.”
Let’s bombard Canadian Tire with “Why do you not sell recycled toilet paper?” messages and see how they respond.
Cuba Notes
Jane surprised me with a vacation to Cuba for my birthday. While the purpose of the trip was to collapse on a beach, which we did wholeheartedly, I was curious to know how Cubans were doing on the sustainability front.
Cuba is of interest to anyone who wants sustainable practices. With the collapse of its major trade partner - the Soviet Union - in the early 1990s, Cuba had to also contend with (and still does) a tightened trade embargo from the U.S. With limited fossil fuel and food, Cuba went from industrial agriculture to organic farming in about four years flat.
With a little help from Venezuela in recent years, Cuba has some cars back on the road but it continues to produce most of its own food - something it didn’t do during the heyday of the so called ‘green’ revolution. During that time, monocultural state farms dominated Cuban agriculture. The crops, such as sugar, were traded to places like the USSR. Cuban received most of their food from abroad.
To be blunt, aside from a trip to Havana and information from the tour guide, I did very little probing on the organic front – given that I spent most of my time on a beach and had trouble even communicating the word ‘vegetarian’ to the wait staff (the so-called vegetarian corner in the buffet was laced with beef and bacon).
So my observations are of an eco-conscious western tourist confined to an all-inclusive resort. You can only imagine the dichotomies with which I was faced, which in a nutshell was: all-out food and booze fest in a land of rations and conservation.
At the resort, conservation measures were folded into every day life in this strange community of rapacious Canadians. Key cards were used to turn on lights, forcing people to turn them off before they left. All lights were compact fluorescents (however outdoor lights were left on). All toilets were dual flush (while beach showers were left running). Electrical cars buzzed up and down the extensive grounds (carrying bloated guests from the buffet to the beach). The food was for the most part local (with great quantities of it left on plates to be tossed). I often wondered what the Cubans, who survive on $15 Canadian a month, thought of us.
As for the flight (the night flight revealed only a few lights, hardly defining the towns below), Jane and I will offset our carbon output through Planetair’s carbon trading scheme. Our money will go towards investments in renewable energy. We will continue to eat all our food on our plates, not stuff ourselves, turn off lights, and walk whenever we can.
In the News
Pressure mounts on farming powers amid food crisis
This is a highly serious matter that calls to question biofuels and shines a light on the population crisis.
A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice
And then there’s the effect of global warming on food production.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Carbon Offsets
Shock. Confusion. Guilt. These feelings blew through me like an extreme weather event after I calculated my carbon footprint for 2007 (which came in at a grotesque 11.2 tonnes!). You may understand my pain having done your own calculations. One way to assuage our guilt over our global warming contribution is to purchase carbon offsets.
Carbon offsets are a fancy term for a self imposed tax for bad behaviour or an investment in renewable clean energy based on your difficult-to-avoid fossil fuel lifestyle – depending on how you like to see it.
A carbon offset IS NOT a ‘get out of jail free card’. By investing in clean energy we are not neutralizing our carbon footprint, despite what some carbon offset companies like to boast. The danger with this thinking is that it implies we can continue to pig out on carbon so long as we pay for it.
Carbon offsets are effective when combined with a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As I reduce my footprint year by year I help strengthen the renewable energy sector through carbon offsets. I calculate my annual greenhouse gas footprint, set a goal to reduce it and purchase offsets based on my annual greenhouse gas contribution. For my 2007 carbon footprint of (gulp) 11.2 tonnes of greenhouse gases, I paid $380 to Planetair, an offset company based in Quebec. Next year, I anticipate paying less due to reductions in my carbon footprint.
There are a number of carbon offset companies. The ones to look for are certified Gold Standard. Certified companies meet key environmental criteria and focus exclusively on energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
Gold Standard Carbon Offset Companies
The following companies are certified Gold Standard:
Planetair
Based in Canada. Works with My Climate.
My Climate
Based in Switzerland
Sustainable Travel International
Based in the USA
Climate Friendly
Based in Australia
Atmosfair
Based in Germany
For more information, visit the David Suzuki Foundation site and a Comparison of Carbon Offset Vendors
Alternatively, you could always support an energy retailer that invests 100% in renewable energy in your province/state or offers this option. Bullfrog Power is an example. Other retailers like Summitt Energy are planning to offer this as well. You pay a little extra per month for clean energy but you are investing in a sustainable future
In the News
Europe’s Appetite for Seafood Propels Illegal Trade
If we don’t stop the madness, we won’t be eating fish in a few decades.
Where cancer-causing agents lurk
Ontario to approve Great Lakes wind power
Carbon offsets are a fancy term for a self imposed tax for bad behaviour or an investment in renewable clean energy based on your difficult-to-avoid fossil fuel lifestyle – depending on how you like to see it.
A carbon offset IS NOT a ‘get out of jail free card’. By investing in clean energy we are not neutralizing our carbon footprint, despite what some carbon offset companies like to boast. The danger with this thinking is that it implies we can continue to pig out on carbon so long as we pay for it.
Carbon offsets are effective when combined with a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As I reduce my footprint year by year I help strengthen the renewable energy sector through carbon offsets. I calculate my annual greenhouse gas footprint, set a goal to reduce it and purchase offsets based on my annual greenhouse gas contribution. For my 2007 carbon footprint of (gulp) 11.2 tonnes of greenhouse gases, I paid $380 to Planetair, an offset company based in Quebec. Next year, I anticipate paying less due to reductions in my carbon footprint.
There are a number of carbon offset companies. The ones to look for are certified Gold Standard. Certified companies meet key environmental criteria and focus exclusively on energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
Gold Standard Carbon Offset Companies
The following companies are certified Gold Standard:
Planetair
Based in Canada. Works with My Climate.
My Climate
Based in Switzerland
Sustainable Travel International
Based in the USA
Climate Friendly
Based in Australia
Atmosfair
Based in Germany
For more information, visit the David Suzuki Foundation site and a Comparison of Carbon Offset Vendors
Alternatively, you could always support an energy retailer that invests 100% in renewable energy in your province/state or offers this option. Bullfrog Power is an example. Other retailers like Summitt Energy are planning to offer this as well. You pay a little extra per month for clean energy but you are investing in a sustainable future
In the News
Europe’s Appetite for Seafood Propels Illegal Trade
If we don’t stop the madness, we won’t be eating fish in a few decades.
Where cancer-causing agents lurk
Ontario to approve Great Lakes wind power
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Paying for my Bad
Carbon credits have been debated as a solution to sustainable lifestyles and businesses. Some say it’s a cop out, others an important step in a transitioning world.
The Wonderful World of Carbon Credits
Carbon credits are mix between a tax and investment. Their application is, for the time being, strictly voluntary. If you fly, you can pay a carbon credit based on kilometers flown. The carbon credit organization will invest your money in the renewable energy industry. These credits are not limited to air travel. You can purchase them if you drive a car, heat a home or any other activity that sends greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Carbon credit organizations will provide you with an emissions calculator by which to base your monthly contribution.
Sadly most investment firms and banks do not offer clients green portfolios. Good behaviour is not as lucrative as damaging behaviour. As public concern mounts and governments and citizens increasingly support renewable energy, I imagine that there will come a time in the near future when our investment portfolios will include companies that support sustainable enterprises. Until then, let’s assuage our guilt by paying for our very own greenhouse gases.
Not Let Off the Hook
Carbon credits must not be seen as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Purchasing carbon credits must also be matched with a plan to wean oneself from activities that warm the planet.
Some of you fly often. It may be part of your job. Can you reduce your air travel and invest in teleconferencing? If you drive, do you have a plan to cut back and use alternative means to get around? Can you carpool? Do you have a plan to make your home more energy efficient?
Every time you fly or drive, heat your home, even eat meat, can you pay a carbon credit organization to support a transitioning world?
My trip to Mexico cost me $10 in carbon credit. Hardly enough to break the bank. Rather than pay a carbon credit for my home energy use, I will pay Bullfrog Power, a utility alternative, once I receive my first utility bill which should be anytime soon. That will be about $1 extra a day. Not a bad incentive to make my home energy efficient and cut back on energy waste.
Keep in mind that companies and not-for-profit organizations too are invited to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing carbon credits.
Canada
Tree Canada
USA
TerraPass
Based in California
Carbonfund.org
Maryland-based company
Bonneville Environmental Foundation
Based in Oregon
Green-e
A program of the Centre for Resource Solutions
UK
The CarbonNeutral Company
Global Cool
Carbon Credits in the News
UK offsets all Government flights while encouraging citizens to go green
For a snapshot of these companies and more visit EcoBusiness Links.
In the News
I missed Al Gore when he came to Toronto to give a talk at the University of Toronto (sniff). Getting tickets was a miracle (sold out in three minutes). In fact, demand for tickets crashed the U of T’s ticket website.
People are anxious about global warming. Take a deep breath, stop feeling so damn helpless and visit my blog!
Green Bloggers
Ecoshock
Grist Magazine
Tree Hugger
Zerofootprint Blog
StopGlobalWarming.org
The Wonderful World of Carbon Credits
Carbon credits are mix between a tax and investment. Their application is, for the time being, strictly voluntary. If you fly, you can pay a carbon credit based on kilometers flown. The carbon credit organization will invest your money in the renewable energy industry. These credits are not limited to air travel. You can purchase them if you drive a car, heat a home or any other activity that sends greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Carbon credit organizations will provide you with an emissions calculator by which to base your monthly contribution.
Sadly most investment firms and banks do not offer clients green portfolios. Good behaviour is not as lucrative as damaging behaviour. As public concern mounts and governments and citizens increasingly support renewable energy, I imagine that there will come a time in the near future when our investment portfolios will include companies that support sustainable enterprises. Until then, let’s assuage our guilt by paying for our very own greenhouse gases.
Not Let Off the Hook
Carbon credits must not be seen as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Purchasing carbon credits must also be matched with a plan to wean oneself from activities that warm the planet.
Some of you fly often. It may be part of your job. Can you reduce your air travel and invest in teleconferencing? If you drive, do you have a plan to cut back and use alternative means to get around? Can you carpool? Do you have a plan to make your home more energy efficient?
Every time you fly or drive, heat your home, even eat meat, can you pay a carbon credit organization to support a transitioning world?
My trip to Mexico cost me $10 in carbon credit. Hardly enough to break the bank. Rather than pay a carbon credit for my home energy use, I will pay Bullfrog Power, a utility alternative, once I receive my first utility bill which should be anytime soon. That will be about $1 extra a day. Not a bad incentive to make my home energy efficient and cut back on energy waste.
Keep in mind that companies and not-for-profit organizations too are invited to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing carbon credits.
Canada
Tree Canada
USA
TerraPass
Based in California
Carbonfund.org
Maryland-based company
Bonneville Environmental Foundation
Based in Oregon
Green-e
A program of the Centre for Resource Solutions
UK
The CarbonNeutral Company
Global Cool
Carbon Credits in the News
UK offsets all Government flights while encouraging citizens to go green
For a snapshot of these companies and more visit EcoBusiness Links.
In the News
I missed Al Gore when he came to Toronto to give a talk at the University of Toronto (sniff). Getting tickets was a miracle (sold out in three minutes). In fact, demand for tickets crashed the U of T’s ticket website.
People are anxious about global warming. Take a deep breath, stop feeling so damn helpless and visit my blog!
Green Bloggers
Ecoshock
Grist Magazine
Tree Hugger
Zerofootprint Blog
StopGlobalWarming.org
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