Betty’s Biodiesel Blog

I wish to start this blog off with a story:
Once upon a time in 2000, I was told that Shaklee, the company my Mom had a business with, was providing these things called offsets. I was somewhat aware of the earths crisis and became intrigued by this offset where you enter in the amount of miles I drove, miles I flew, and amount of energy I used in the home. After calculating these amounts up popped an image of about 40 trees that needed to be planted to offset my carbon as well as a price tag of $80 needed to make that tree planting project work. I paid $40 for half of the trees since I was about to be a student and money was tight but felt good knowing that I could make a difference with the energy I had emitted from my around the world travels via airplane. I was hooked and then Shaklee took the calculator away from the site and I was left wondering if that kind of service would come back again. In 2003, I learned of Bonneville Foundation and was happy to see “green Tags” making a way into the market so I bought some more of those, got my sticker and went happily on my way of still driving my car which was now running on biodiesel. Now in 2007 there are dozens of way to offset, people driving around with bumper sticker and license plate covers that all say something to the effect of this car is climate neutral or green house gas neutral. These dozen green tag/carbon offset companies are connecting the funds generated from these tags to wind, solar, methane recovery and tree projects to continue the race to reverse climate change. You can even offset your flying miles directly with Travelocity. Unfortunately the political leadership is frozen in an ice age of stupidity till November 2008 unless congress can change that.
Now enter my dear green friends who when bringing up this concept of Carbon offsets complain that they are just a lazy approach to this problem. I completely agree that we do need massive conservation effort and we’ve been getting this message from the environmental community right along with the message of buying a new car. The way I see it is this, if people are driving around and aren’t paying for it via offsets isn’t that like saying the price we give on the environment is $0.00? I also know that if people really understand what they are using individually they have a better chance of making changes. Meanwhile, when they pay $28 for a carbon offset (the price of my car running on 40 mpg for 10K miles) instead of $0 that money goes to make these carbon reducing projects happen. These projects include: Solar, wind, methane recovery and tree planting to name a few and the numerous offset companies are providing us all an opportunity to do something with our use and abuse.

So now this industry is gaining momentum but it is still going through growing pains including:
- education of what a carbon offset is
- every offset company offers a different fee for the credits
- 3rd party certification is crucial for the integrity of these credits and is unfortunately getting overlooked by some people buying credits.
- Terminology needs to be clearly defined for the lay person
Etc.
No industry before has come close to directly linking our economic system to our ecological life support system, aka Earth. I was reminded by Lynn Twist (guru of fundraiser from the heart), that humans were the life forms that created this money in the first place to help a very complex system of trading goods and services, however the intent of making our lives more simple got off track somewhere along that path thus we have an imbalance of priorities and the way money works for us.

I am passionate about our environment getting a price tag on it. I feel it is both necessary and nauseating at the same time. As a long time capitalist, I can see our human need to maintain the status quo by not attacking the very system that drove us to this place of utter earth abuse. As a human it is ludicrous to place a price tag on our life support system…money shouldn’t be involved. But where to go from here?

I say reduce your driving, by carpooling, taking transit, riding a bike, walking, etc. and when you can’t or won’t, buy offsets to invest in a different future. The more voluntary offsets are purchased the more carbon and methane recovery projects occur, the less greenhouse gas emissions enter our atmosphere and louder the message of people investing in change reaches our leaders of this nation and the world.