My Carbon Footprint
The bad news: I'm guilty.
According to this basic carbon emissions calculator, I'm even worse than the average american, and generating 28 tons of CO2 a year. In contrast, a middle-class Indian family that was interviewed on NPR last night generated 3.5 tons in a year. A whole family!
I think the problem is mostly my estimated 30,000 miles of air travel (India 2 times a year).
Also, the website didn't even know about my piece of shit drafty windows.
The good news: There are things you can do to offset your emissions.
I just allegedly offset my 28 tons by spending $120 to plant trees at the above website.
The ambiguous news: I'm not actually convinced that planting trees helps that much. The problem is that when you plant trees, the carbon gets sequestered away into the plant material and the soil, but this is not a permanent fix. If the soil is tilled or turned over, the carbon is released back into the air. When the tree dies and rots (or is burnt), its carbon is re-released. So trees are all fine and dandy as a short-term fix, but they don't really make me a less polluting person in the long run.
Another issue: According to the website, "On average, each tree planted as part of the Fund's Carbon Zero program sequesters approximately 1.33 tons of CO2 equivalent over a 70-year period." This is slow. This means that my carbon emissions from this year will only be offset by 1/70 this year. We need to be decreasing carbon NOW, not over 70 years (because even if we completely stopped emitting carbon right now, zero carbon, we would still have 50 years of warming ahead of us due to the heat capacity of the earth). I should be planting 70 times more trees, and then if my carbon emissions stayed approximately the same, these trees would clean up after me for the rest of my life. Which isn't so bad, that would be $8000 to be relatively carbon neutral for the rest of my life. I don't have $8000 now, though, so I'll just have to plant trees in installments.
According to this basic carbon emissions calculator, I'm even worse than the average american, and generating 28 tons of CO2 a year. In contrast, a middle-class Indian family that was interviewed on NPR last night generated 3.5 tons in a year. A whole family!
I think the problem is mostly my estimated 30,000 miles of air travel (India 2 times a year).
Also, the website didn't even know about my piece of shit drafty windows.
The good news: There are things you can do to offset your emissions.
I just allegedly offset my 28 tons by spending $120 to plant trees at the above website.
The ambiguous news: I'm not actually convinced that planting trees helps that much. The problem is that when you plant trees, the carbon gets sequestered away into the plant material and the soil, but this is not a permanent fix. If the soil is tilled or turned over, the carbon is released back into the air. When the tree dies and rots (or is burnt), its carbon is re-released. So trees are all fine and dandy as a short-term fix, but they don't really make me a less polluting person in the long run.
Another issue: According to the website, "On average, each tree planted as part of the Fund's Carbon Zero program sequesters approximately 1.33 tons of CO2 equivalent over a 70-year period." This is slow. This means that my carbon emissions from this year will only be offset by 1/70 this year. We need to be decreasing carbon NOW, not over 70 years (because even if we completely stopped emitting carbon right now, zero carbon, we would still have 50 years of warming ahead of us due to the heat capacity of the earth). I should be planting 70 times more trees, and then if my carbon emissions stayed approximately the same, these trees would clean up after me for the rest of my life. Which isn't so bad, that would be $8000 to be relatively carbon neutral for the rest of my life. I don't have $8000 now, though, so I'll just have to plant trees in installments.