I don't know about you folks in the northern hemisphere, but the year I just spent in drought-stricken Australia was enough to make me go green. Global warming no longer seems a question but a reality. We've got to do what we can to stop producing greenhouse gases!Easy to say if you live like a tribal Aborigine. Very hard to say if you're a globe-trotting cosmopolitan like myself, for there's no worse thing to do than fly (even though I use public transport for everything else). While in Australia this was a sort of theoretical problem for me - I pondered the bad karma of the poor antipodean who not only had to travel long and expensively to get most places, but had to add to global warming everytime s/he did so. Now that I'm sort of an honorary member of the Australasian diaspora - worse, in a way, since I don't have to go there every year from here on in, though I'd like to - it hits home. So what to do?
One option is so-called carbon offset: determine how much CO2 you cause, and pay to cancel it out, either through planting of trees or contributing to the development of green energy sources. It's controversial, I gather: it may not deter people who can afford to pay for the offset from doing things needing offsetting (rather the way Papal indulgences became a way to sin more easily). Many carbon offsetting hucksters exist, too, who will take your money but it'll never find its way to tree-planting or green energy.
I decided to trust the organization recommended by the Social and Economic Justice Committee at my church, http://www.nativeenergy.com/. And I've done it: I've paid off the 10.2 tons of carbon (!!!) produced by the 20,742 miles of my round trips New York-Melbourne and now New York-California. It cost $132, a satisfying amount. (When I checked some sites I found on my own the other day it came to about $5 for New York-San Diego one way, which seemed too slight to have any effect, absolving or deterrant.)
Was this a silly thing to do? A fool and his money, no? Better than the fool spending the money on more air travel? And I'm no Dostoyevsky: I'm not likely to hop on cheapo flights just for the thrill of then offsetting the carbon. But will it make me travel less?
(The photo has nothing to do with this subject; it's just some very beautiful wild flax - my father tells me it's called Mountain or San Diego Mahogony - I found in nearby Crest Canyon a few hours ago.)
