Going green
Thursday, October 5th, 2006… though I’m not going to start putting green on a boat.
I’m not a total climate alarmist… but I’ve read enough and watched
enough to want to start doing something.
So I’ve decided to try and go carbon-emission neutral.
First step was to try to neutralise my car - which is hardly used
as it is - through an operation called GreenFleet. Basically they’re
going to plant a bunch of trees to offset my emissions for the
year.
But that’s only the start.
I logged onto one web site and did a calculation on my carbon
footprint… after all the flights this year it’s not pretty. If I
was to try and offset those emissions by purchasing carbon credits
(ie. energy from renewable sources) it would cost me over $6600.
Hmmm… makes me think cheap flights are no so cheap.
So the next step is to offset the household energy
consumption. We’re on some level of green power at home, but
I’m thinking of getting 100% of it from renewables. That should
only cost about a dollar a day.
Cutting out overseas sailing is really not an option at this stage
(though I could start sailing there instead…) so the flights are
going to have to stay for now… I’ll just have to reduce the
number of them by combining events and staying over there longer…
sounds like a good idea to me.
From there? How to offset all the chemicals that are created in the
process of building all these carbon-fibre boats and plastic
sails… hmmm…
Maybe I should also replace my appliances with
some energy efficient ones.
