Blog #262: Jet-Setting and Carbon Offsets

Exciting news!! I finally booked my flight to Reno to see my amazing and wonderful friends Mary Alice and Sarah, and I truly could not be more excited. Mary Alice's family has a lake house on Lake Tahoe, so we are going to spend some time there catching up and just enjoying each other's company. Words cannot express how happy I am to be able to see them in a couple months.

That said, I've become increasingly aware of the impact all my flying has on the environment. I've grown more and more conscious of my carbon footprint, which has led to me being almost vegan and attempting to reduce my consumption habits, but my carbon footprint is still decent-sized because of the amount of flying I do. It's just bad for the environment.

So, without sacrificing the chance to see my two great friends, I wondered if there was a way I could reduce the impact my flying habits have on the environment, and I came across something I hadn't heard of before: carbon offsets. Essentially, the concept of this is that when you fly, you donate money to a certain agency to offset the environmental impact of your flight.

With great risk of oversimplifying this and sounding quite uneducated, I'll just give a simple example that a roundtrip flight in the US might produce one metric ton of carbon, so a person would purchase an "offset" which either gets rid of one metric ton of carbon or eliminates it from being produced. In this way, those who are producing carbon are also those who take a hand in reducing it. I got most of my information from this article on The Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/questions-about-carbon-offsets-flights-answered/

After some research, I came across a project that I felt like donating to in order to offset the impact of my flight. I followed this link (https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissions) in the Post article to the Gold Standard, which is a reputable source that verifies projects and details their work. Through Gold Standard, I found a project that provides "cleaner" cookstoves to women in rural Karnataka, which is actually the state where I spent my last semester while studying in India!

This specific project is through the Fair Climate Fund, and I had to click one more link to get to their website so I could actually donate. https://www.fairclimatefund.nl/en/projects/india-improved-cookstoves-for-women Here you can find the description of the project, and if you scroll down there is an "offset directly" button I clicked to purchase my carbon offset. Personally, there are a lot of things I liked about this specific project.

First of all, this initiative is undertaken in partnership with a local organization called Samuha, which is located in the region of Karnataka that this work is actually being done in. Fair Climate Fund is based in the Netherlands, but instead of coming in and demanding their way, by partnering with a local organization, they have dedicated themselves to learning and doing what is best for the community by the people who live there. This is really important to me.

Secondly, I feel more connected to this than other projects, because I lived in this state for half a year and connected with people who this could hypothetically benefit. Of course this doesn't make it inherently a more valuable project than others, but for me personally, it feels even more impactful.

Third, this project is multifaceted in the issues it tackles. First and foremost, the purpose of the "clean" stoves is to reduce the amount of wood needed to use them. Deforestation is a problem in this region, so having stoves that require less wood is a great way to combat this. This is where the actual carbon offset comes in, as fewer trees are cut down and less polluting smoke is created from the burning of the wood. Yet, beyond just the environmental impact, this initiative benefits women and gives them more autonomy. Traditionally, women have been responsible for the gathering of wood for stoves, which takes a substantive amount of time. These new stoves not only free them of much of that labor, but also drastically reduce the amount of heavy smoke they breathe in while cooking. It's a win-win.

Finally, I was encouraged to pick this project because it is verified by Fair-trade Carbon Credits and Gold Standard. I trust that my money will be put to use in the way it has been promised to be.

So, after considering all these factors and picking this project, I purchased my carbon offset. The Fair Climate Fund website had a carbon calculator, which could easily be used to determine how much carbon you produce for a specific flight, a drive, or even just by your energy consumption. You can also pretty easily find a carbon calculator just by searching the internet, which is what I did (before I ever got to the Fair Climate Fund website).

I found that my specific flights, which I input with layovers and everything, will produce about 1.067 metric tons of carbon. I simply selected the project I wanted to donate to, input the number of metric tons, and was given a monetary total; 18.15 euros, or about $20 USD to offset the carbon from my flights. Considering I had just paid a couple hundred dollars for the flights themselves, this $20 seemed a very small trade for offsetting my carbon production and supporting a community I care about.

This is a really cool way to be proactive about your carbon footprint, and I plan to do this for all the flights I take from now on. To me, it seems like kind of the same mindset I have about tipping your servers; if you can afford to go out to eat, you can afford to tip your server. In the same way, if you can afford to take a flight, you can afford to offset your carbon production from said flight.

Even though it's surely not a perfect system (and taking more sustainable transportation as opposed to flying is a guaranteed way to reduce your carbon footprint), I don't think there's anything wrong with making an effort to reduce your environmental impact if you do choose to fly. So, I hope that if you find yourself booking a flight any time in the near future, you consider purchasing carbon offsets as well, because we can all stand to do a little better for our people and our planet.

This is just a quick screenshot of part of the project page on Fair Climate Fund. Click the link above to get all the info!