Comparison of Carbon Offsets

Do you know what your carbon footprint is? It is the total of all of your activities that result in the production of CO2. This includes driving your car, taking a flight, using electricity supplied by coal or natural gas plants, and heating your home.

The Nature Conservancy has a good website to calculate your carbon footprint:
www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/

Now that you've figured out how much CO2 you are responsible for, what do you want to do about it? The first step is to try to reduce your impact as much as possible. Then, you can purchase carbon offsets to take care of the rest.

Carbon offsets come in a variety of different forms.
1) Some programs plant trees to essentially "soak up" CO2 from the atmosphere, which has the added benefit of creating animal habitat, however it takes decades for the CO2 to be removed.
2) Other programs reward companies for reducing their CO2 emissions through increased efficiency (similar to the European cap and trade systems that may be adopted here in the US).
3) Finally, the best option is to buy "green energy" through renewable sources such as wind and solar power. This works by consumers paying the premium for the difference in price between renewable and fossil fuel power generation.

Ecobusinesslinks.com compiled an excellent review of some current carbon offset programs that you can choose from to offset your own carbon footprint.

See:
www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_offset_wind_credits_carbon_reduction.htm