apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

While I'm a supporter of the idea of carbon neutrality (and have offset all of my plane travel/car travel/household energy use for two years now), folks interested in going carbon neutral should research the various nonprofits and companies providing this service.

For instance, the rather controversial Trexler report (see a breakdown of it at http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/6/161553/895) totally dismisses RECs, which I as well agree with, but it also disses some legit companies such as TerraPass.

Flummoxed, I decided to stay with Native Energy for my second year of offsetting, since they're well regarded, allow you to easily offset all of your various carbon outputs, and also work on social policies as well as environmental policies.

All of this stuff is a little hard to navigate, and if consumers are going to be sold on the idea of offsetting their emissions, the entire process needs to be simplified.

If you're having trouble with Elkanikkole's link, just remove the second half of the parenthesis from the url & it will work!

And thanks, Elkanikkole, for the good comment. The carbon calculating/offsetting topic does seem to be rather mysterious and inconcise, at times. I agree that a clearer version of the process would probably work wonders with the public. As far as donating money goes, I guess it's all about doing your research and following your gut.

the footprint issue is quite difficult here in the united states. maybe only a small group of people (compared to the 300million inhabitants of US) in the large cities understand and accept the footprint concept. With all the distances people have to drive around here, just to take their children to school activities, it's nearly impossible. My husband and I are very low impact on the environment, don't own a car (thanks to the good public transportation system in NYC), but yet I felt we were not doing enough. So I decided to solicit city agencies, local reps, neighbours to plant trees on our street. I live in Astoria NY, which is prooved to have most flat rooftops than any other city in Northern America, which very quickly (in the hot months) adds to the heat and humidity and impacts the environment for the worse. So here I am thinking, we need more trees in Astoria, let me contact all these people. No one wants to deal with it, apparently in New York the owners of the house are responsible for requesting for a tree to be planted. So the community board said that in the commercial stretch, owners don't like trees bcs it covers their expensive awnings.... I was speechless. There are streets in our area that have no trees, although I must say it is better than it was 10 years ago. But yet, here I am trying to change a few things in a small away, and everywhere I got a dead end. I asked the neighbours if they can request new trees to be planted, some ignored it, some said they will do it... But short of bribing them to plant trees, I don't know what else to do. So my point is, that we need to ofsett the carbon footprint first in our communities. Start small to get the grand scale of the country... I hope in 10 years it is a different story.

i read an interesting article about this recently in the nation. see here -- don't bet on offsets.

just more food for thought.

a vegetarian diet reduces your carbon footprint.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/06/business/greencol07.php

Okay, I'm vegan, drive only once or twice a week, use barely any electricity or gas, and it told me I need to plant 12 trees. Weh?