All posts in COP12

Posted:
October 20, 2006
Author:
COA Students

What is Offsetting?

This is an incomplete post salvaged from the internet archive.

-by John

This is a common question, and it begs varied responses because the issue is highly contextual. The idea generally revolves around the fact that carbon dioxide and the other Green House Gasses (GHG) persist and spread throughout our atmosphere for at least 100 years. Because their presence is diffuse, the location of GHG emission is not important. Net quantity is the issue, and the theory of offsetting essentially posits that by funding emission reductions somewhere else, one counters their own direct or indirect emissions arising from sources such as cars or electricity. This manifests itself in many ways, and there does not appear to be consistency in the metrics. Offsetting organizations offer a diverse portfolio, from wind power, to energy efficient development, to bovine methane power, to forest sinks.

Posted:
October 20, 2006
Author:
COA Students

People are a part of nature too…

-by Sarah

Which is why I offset my CO2 emissions for travel to COP12 with Conservation International, a D.C.-based organization which supports long-term, community-based conservation projects like the Makira Forest Project in the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar, which focuses on local education and empowerment around agroforestry to reduce deforestation. To learn more about the project, visit http://www.conservation.org/xp/frontlines/protectedareas/07100601.xml

and go to ConservationInternational.org to learn more about the organization. The choice to offset my emissions through them was an easy one when I read their mission statement: “…to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniousely with nature.” Because we’re all here together…

Posted:
October 16, 2006
Author:
COA Students

Travel Emissions Indulgences through NativeEnergy

-by Michael

So that my means of transport to the upcoming Conference may be less destructive to the atmosphere of the planet we are trying to aid, I too bought carbon offsets through NativeEnergy. The company, a cooperative of Native Americans, is based in my home state of Vermont, so for me the purchase was local as well as moral. The money invested, at $12.00 per ton of Carbon, goes towards sustainable energy production through wind farming. My fellow Vermonters, farmers of the power of the soil as well as the wind, are the people who head this organization. This investment is an aid to farmers who are facing low milk prices and other woes, as they can find a steady profit in a technology that works for them generating clean electricity for us consumers and our atmosphere.

You can check out NativeEnergy and its carbon offset kingdom at www.nativeenergy.com

Posted:
October 15, 2006
Author:
COA Students

Carbon Offsets with NativeEnergy

-by Matthew

In 19 days I will be in Boston’s Logan International Airport ready for 14 hours and 40 minutes of sitting in a Boeing 747. I will fly 7,513 miles going 895km/h over the Atlantic Ocean towards a part of the world I have never been to, to attend a very important international conference on climate change and hopefully work towards ultimately halting the threat of global warming. It might seem ironic for somebody from the United States to fly 7,513 miles (14,815 miles round trip) to Nairobi, Kenya, burning a kerosene/paraffin oil-based fuel and emitting 5.78 tons of the green house gas Carbon Dioxide directly into the troposphere, all for the purpose of mitigating climate change. Thankfully my environmentalist spirit can rest somewhat assured that my carbon footprint will not be quite so large. I recently purchased carbon offsets from a company called NativeEnergy.

Under federal law when “clean” energy produced through wind farms is introduced into the electricity grid it has priority over energy created through unsustainable means, thus displacing the “dirty” energy created by fossil fuel burning energy suppliers. The electricity grid can only have a certain amount of energy flowing into it. When energy created through sustainable means, such as wind power, is introduced into the grid, the people who operate the grid turn down the less sustainable energy generators to compensate. By purchasing carbon offsets through NativeEnergy I am assured that an amount of sustainable wind farm energy equal to the energy it took to create my 5.78 tons of Carbon Dioxide will be introduced into the grid over a 25-year period. This is the process of offsetting green house gas emissions. The $12 it took to buy these carbon offsets will help fund new construction of sustainable wind generators.

14,815 miles is a long way to travel, and 5.78 tons is a lot of Carbon Dioxide to emit. Carbon offsets aren’t the answer to stopping global warming in its tracks, but it sure helps.

Check out NativeEnergy at http://www.nativeenergy.com/

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