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.

After ready about another attack in Iraq where 9 children died I write this blog…

Amazing to me how a woman who gestates for 9 months can fathom her child taken from her by a bullet from a supposed anti-terrorist group. She can’t fathom it, all she sees and feels every waking day after the death of her child is exactly that terror that we are trying to stop, or are we.
Are we simply packing this so called war on terrorism like we package everything else in America? Do you want that Small. Medium, Large, Extra large, or Supersized.

We the people of this country are getting dumbed down, overplayed, patronized and belittled by our own people. Being in the advertising industry myself, I was nauseated to see how much we have reduced our individual uniqueness down to buying patterns, ratings, polls, stats, and colorful ads that dig deep into our abused psyche. The more we are dumbed down, the more the slick advertisers have us by our minds and pocketbooks. And in my little world of Go Green, shop local, buy organic, go vegetarian, go raw, cleanse, reduce, reuse, recycle, I meet others that are doing some if not all of these things and think “wow we really have a chance”, then I board public transit, get a whiff of “Chemie” cologne from a guy going down the aisle carrying two plastic bags filled with personal items from Rite Aid and think, “wow we have a far far way to go”.

Back to the kids…they deserve more, they deserve better than allowing their sweet innocent bodies to get killed by our insane quest for control over resources that is an end game. This quest is simply the visual ugliness in addiction. The addict in total denial about to have a serious wake up call, oh wait that’s what New Orleans was and yet we still forge ahead in clearing Iraq of its terrorists…has anyone ever thought of us in fact being the ones that provoke terror. I know that “Secure the area” = blow it all up, riddle it with bullets while our 18 year old soldiers play Black Sabbath on their ipods as if they were in a video game totally unconnected to reality.  Yet they too pay a price. We see it in the stories of the guys that get home. Finally here maybe missing a limb here or there, troubled with PTSD, finding “home” to be a joke compared to where they were just at. Meanwhile we talk of Iraq like it is this other place, this shithole for our boys to experience the world get totally f____d in the head and never imagine it for its beauty. The crafting, the food, the people, the kids. The second we summarize Iraq into one category we summarize all of humanity into that category. It’s like categorizing all Californians as blonde surfers who have beautiful bodies and hang out on the beach everyday. Or take this radical perspective and imagine humans from a lab rats perspective…who are we to them? put aside for a moment the blah blah story of how their testing helps us and really get into their reality or an Iraqi child for that matter. We are not leading, we are killing, maiming and continuing in our denial.

Somewhere in all of this dismay, disbelief and what I call unfathomable, I think to myself what am I doing about it? First, I think alot and then I think not enough. Writing this blog is a start because if it reaches one person who feels the same way and chooses to do something about it then it is worth it. If it reaches no one and helps me through the immediate pain of hearing about people especially children dying from bullet wounds then it is worth it. I have pain in my jaw and heartache in my heart for the way humanity treats one another and all other forms of life and I have to include myself in this harm for if I drive my car even if on biodiesel, I contribute to the use of roads, oil, metal, energy use, etc. All the things that create resource wars. So what do I do. I sell my car and challenge myself to get around by public transportation, which is not everywhere I want to go. Or I keep my car and pay money into offsetting the carbon I emit as well as offset the carbon I emitted since birth. But let’s not stop at the carbon offset, how about a social costs for kids that get maimed and are still alive, wouldn’t they need help? I could pay money into a orphanage that helps kids that are maimed by the war, or help returning vets with getting healing treatments. I could put my time and energy into so many things that are restorative rather than harmful. This is the shift we have been waiting for and I’ve been waiting to write this piece to get a reminder of that.