Offsetting our carbon footprint

It started with this article, https://www.quakerearthcare.org/article/quaker-popoffsets

The premise of the article was to figure out the most efficient way individuals could offset their carbon (CO2) footprint. The article comes to the conclusion that one of the most efficient methods of reducing future carbon is to help provide contraception for women who want it but cannot access it.

“The cost of offsetting CO2 by traditional methods (planting trees, investing in renewables, retrofitting industrial plants, etc.) usually runs in the range of $5 to $20 per ton. Calculations suggest that as little as $2 invested in family planning can offset a ton of carbon.“

Not everyone is going to be comfortable with the family planning option, but if not, you can always offset your carbon footprint by donating to a tree-planting charity or some other carbon offset method instead. For a ranking of CO2 reduction strategies see, https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

The first step in offsetting your own carbon is to calculate your carbon footprint. The Quaker Earthcare article suggests several calculators for estimating your own carbon footprint. I used this one, https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/

For me, the key was to not get too hung up about the fact that I was unable to provide exact numbers. For example, I don’t know what my gas and electric bills are averaged over a year because we’ve only been in this new house since April. And our previous house, in Placitas, was all-electric with solar panels.

I estimated our annual heating gas bill by doubling the amount of the bill at our much smaller townhome in Santa Fe. Obviously, that’s very general, because Santa Fe is 10 degrees colder than Albuquerque in the winter, and because my townhome had in-floor, hot-water radiant heat and our new house has a gas furnace and a gas fireplace. But I figured that if I assumed double the townhouse usage, it would be a conservative (high) estimate.

For our car mileage, I estimated off the top of my head, and then I asked John to estimate. His estimates were a bit higher than mine, so I went with his to be conservative.

Total for our household came to 43,773 lbs (21.88 tons) combined, for the two of us. This is a lot lower than the 20 tons per person that the article said was the US average. Google also puts the use carbon footprint at 21 tons per person. 2-person households are more efficient than individual households, although our estimate is also lower than the 30 tons per household that the EPA website said is the US average. So perhaps I under estimated ours.

Our biggest underestimate that I could think of is that the EPA calculator does not include plane flights. Using this calculator, https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new, our frequent Albuquerque-to-Oakland flights use about half a ton each, round trip. John flies to California almost every month, and DC a few times a year, and I fly about 3 times a year. So I’m going to add 8 tons to our earlier 22 tons, to get 30 tons between the two of us.

One thing I did like about the EPA calculator is that it showed the effect of various conservation measures that you may be considering implementing, for example, if you replaced your car with one that gets better gas mileage. Unfortunately, it did not provide a way to calculate the difference if you replaced a car with an electric car. Eventually we intend to replace the Mini Cooper with an electric car, hopefully next year.

The EPA website also did not provide a way to estimate the additional carbon that will come from our intention to replace our evaporative cooler with refrigerated air next year. That will save water but use additional electricity. I could probably estimate that using other calculators, but I didn’t try.

It also doesn’t include the manufacture and delivery of all the stuff I buy all the time. I buy stuff practically everyday. For example, just today I’ve purchased:

  • A book for Larrisa called “Just Ask” by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor
  • A coffee canister
  • A few clothing items from Uniqlo, which is a Japanese clothing company. Their clothes are simple, reasonably good quality and inexpensive. (If you decide to order from them, be careful to check the size chart, because they run small.)
  • And today John bought at Home Depot: lumber, stain, paint, tubing, grout, stakes, nails, screws, sandpaper, and I don’t even know what-all. (I wish they had a rewards program because a lot of our income goes to that store.)

Who knows what went into the manufacture and shipping of those items, and all the hundreds and thousands of other items we buy every year. So our real carbon footprint has to be a lot more than that EPA website estimated. But for now, assuming the estimate of 30 tons of CO2 per year for the two of us is a reasonable estimate, then how do I go about offsetting it?

According to the article, it could be offset by only $3 per ton. It’s hard for me to believe that $90 would actually offset the entire carbon footprint for both of us for a year. That is an extremely small amount of our yearly budget. But I decided to go ahead with the project and follow the instructions as written.

It was a little confusing to donate to this website.

There’s a nice clear “donate” button on the right, but I was initially unsure if donating there would provide support to the Quaker Earthcare Witness program, or whether that would provide money to the agencies that provide contraception. It turns out that you can use the same form to donate to either one or both.

For the earth.