By Bruce Calhoun, President of Save the Rainforest, Inc.
I try to tread lightly on the planet. I weather-strip, make use of passive solar, and keep my thermostat at 67 degrees in the winter and 77 degrees in the summer. I also multipurpose when running errands in the car, and bicycle almost everywhere – weather permitting. Even so, I am adding CO2 to the atmosphere; exacerbating climate change and thereby contributing to the demise of coral reefs, polar ice caps and low lying coastlines. So I asked myself, how do I ameliorate my negative impact on Mother Earth? The answer came in a flash; I offset my carbon emissions through the Voluntary Carbon Market.
Here’s how I did it. I went to the website of Save the Rainforest, Inc. and selected a project that sold carbon credits. I chose a renewable energy project in India – which took me to the website of the United Nations Carbon Offset Platform – and entered 16 tons (average annual footprint for a North American) in the purchase box and clicked “add to cart”. That was it. I paid $49.60 with my MasterCard and became a Net-Zero carbon emitter. The whole process took me five minutes.
But, I didn’t stop there. I wanted to do more. So I went back to the Save the Rainforest, Inc. site and selected another project. This time it was a project that protected rainforests, coastal wetlands and mangrove estuaries in Guatemala. The project offered credits at a higher price, but I decided to offset one more ton of CO2 because the project had so many co-benefits (aside from sequestering carbon it preserved critically endangered habitat and drastically improved the lives of local people). This brought the total cost of my carbon offsetting portfolio to $69.60 and took me only a few extra minutes.
If you are an individual inclined to follow my example all you have to do is go to www.savetherainforestnow.org to get started. If you own a small business or are the CEO of a corporation you can also get started by going to the website. You can look over the same projects and afterwards contact me to receive your “Road Map” to offset your carbon emissions. The map will guide you through the process of finding project developers from whom you can purchase a large number of credits at a greatly reduced price.
The Save the Rainforest, Inc. website is not the only place you can access crucial information on carbon offsetting. My latest book, Averting the Climate Change Abyss, has just come out on Amazon. It features carbon offset projects as well, but also puts everything in perspective; beginning with a Humpty Dumpty analogy and ending with a tale of three climatologists stranded on a desert island.
The link to purchasing this book is: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09VWRTJQS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
Contact information
Bruce Calhoun
608 729 4877
