The Sustainable Future

How to find the best carbon offsets

When it comes to buying carbon offsets to neutralize the amount of CO2 our energy consumption creates, all options are not created equal. Here's an article in The Seattle Times with some tips on making an informed, effective choice about your carbon offsets purchase.

The tips include...

Peek behind the curtain. Don't accept claims of carbon-offset providers at face value. Ask questions: Who are their partners and endorsers? Do they undergo independent audits to confirm that the money helps the right projects? How do their prices compare with other providers? Which industry standards do they use?

No double-dipping. Make sure a carbon-offset provider's projects offer what is known in the industry as "additionality." In other words, they should not be projects that would have happened anyway without the funding from carbon offsets (such as projects mandated by a government).

Think twice about trees. While they may help the environment in other ways, tree-planting or reforestation projects are the most controversial types of carbon-offset projects. Trees absorb CO2, but scientists disagree on the effectiveness of tree-planting to reduce global warming.

Look in your own backyard. When carbon-offset providers or projects have Northwest roots, you may have more of a connection and greater accountability.

Power up. You can also "think globally and act locally" by joining the green power programs offered by local utilities.

First things first. Before you invest in carbon offsets or green power, make sure you've done all you can to reduce your environmental impact: Drive less, insulate your home, install energy-efficient appliances and buy less stuff. Carbon offsets will never replace good old-fashioned conservation.

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The year of going car-less

Could you give up your car for a year?

Last year Alan Durning, husband, father of three, and founder of the Seattle-based sustainability think-tank Sightline Institute, did just that. When his eighteen year old son totalled his nineteen year old Volvo, Durning and his wife decided to turn it into an opportunity for a year-long experiment.

If, like me, you're not quite prepared to go there yourself, you're in luck. You can still read about it in Durning's fascinating blog about the experience. And it's not just a running inventory of the logistics of life without four wheels, it's also a thoughtful look at the meaning of that life without those four wheels.

Take, for example, when a columnist at a Seattle weekly paper took potshots at Durning, calling him a moocher for bumming rides from others on occasion. Rather than getting defensive about it, Durning started looking at the "gift economy" of swapping rides with other parents, something they were unable to participate in as a car-less family. As he describes it:

The swapping of rides is a convenience and a practicality, of course. But it’s also a form of community building. In fact, anthropologists regard the reciprocal doing of favors as not just a form of community building but as the essence of community building. That’s because humans, like other primates, seem to be programmed to honor the norm of reciprocity, which Stanford social psychologist Deb Gruenfeld defines as “a powerful and pervasive social rule that compels us to treat others as they have treated us. For example, when others have done us a favor, we feel that we ‘owe’ them one in return.”

When the bonds of mutual reciprocity are thick and stretch in many directions, you have a strong community–one that’s high in social capital. And you’ve got the feeling, as a parent, that many hands are there to support you.  People chip in to help you when bad luck strikes, and you do the same for others.
But subtract the car from this equation, and you’re suddenly out of currency for the most basic exchanges.

He goes on to talk about how he and his wife worked out other ways to participate in the community-building gift economy of parenting.

So what about you? Could you go car-less for a year?

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How do you get to work? US commuting statistics

After seeing a post on carbon copy that a recent analysis showed that Boston tops the list of American cities in the percentage of people who walk to work (about 12.5%), I went looking for more information.

The data, gathered from the U.S. Census Bereau's American Community Survey in 2005 and released last month, show that:

• 9 out of 10 workers, or 87.7 percent, drive to work
• 77 percent, driving alone despite rising fuel costs.
• 4.7 percent of commuters used public transportation to get to work, an increase of about 0.1 percent over levels five years earlier.
• The top cities for commuting by public transport were Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
• Portland, Oregon, was found to have the highest percentage of bicycle commuters among large cities with about 3.5 percent of its workers pedaling to work. This is about eight times the national average of 0.4 percent.
• Boston had the highest percentage among large cities of employees who walk to work with 13 percent.
• Nationally, 2.5 percent of Americans walked to work.
• 1 in 10 workers, or 10.7 percent, car pool and three-fourths of car poolers, or 77.3 percent, ride with just one other person. 

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