I just paid my “carbon sin tax” for all my globetrotting in the last year. I put 24 tons of carbon into the atmosphere and I decided to donate my “tax” to a local Land Trust purchase of a square mile of forest on the island where i live. You could do the calculation and donate to a conservation project in your community. Or beyond. Feel free to steal the idea. Even the writing 🙂Dear Whidbey Friends,
I’ve offset my carbon footprint for the year by donating to the Trillium land purchase on Whidbey Island – and you can too.
Here’s the skinny. Contemplating the cost to the earth of my long flights to Brazil I hit on a great idea. Rather than offset the carbon by planting new trees elsewhere, why not donate the $480 cost of 24 tons of carbon I spew into the atmosphere annually to Whidbey Camano Land Trust to keep the trees on the Trillium land standing. This property is one square mile North of Freeland. Whidbey Camano Land Trust has an option to buy it if they raise $4,200,000 ($4.2 million) by September 10. We’ve raised $2.4 leaving $1.8 million still to go. Offset your flying and driving and heating and cooling and meat meals by following the steps below.
Click here to find out what your annual carbon footprint is: http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/. It takes at most 5 minutes.
They will calculate your carbon footprint for you and give you the tonnage, cost per ton and total cost. Mine was $480. Note: If I’d done this in 2007, the year when I did an airplane fast) my footprint would be 11. With Brazil and various conferences it is more than double. And if I LIVED outside the big cities Brazil it could be less than half.(5). Our lifestyle costs a lot, and we CAN mitigate it by offsetting our carbon footprint cost to WCLT for the Trillium land purchase. Otherwise, it goes on the auction block and will be developed.
Now take the total $$$ and donate to your favorite environmental group now! This IS a donation – and isn’t. In addition to our annual giving, we should all be doing our annual offsetting. Two birds with one stone.
If you need more incentive to do it now, my Medicare Birthday is in ten days. Give me a gift and do these steps. I want to multiply my donation to the power of 10. Or 20. Or heck, 100.
love
Vicki
When I hear all the fearmongering about carbon-dioxide, I wonder if schools no longer teach about the carbon cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
Carbon = Life
I tend to have a biased opinion in favor of life on Earth… 😉
Growing and preserving forests is the most productive thing that humans could do regarding carbon. Trying to stop people from burning fossil fuels is futile unless nuclear fusion energy, or something equally game-changing, becomes practical.