... lbs of carbon saved by ... good people.
futility
"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption."
US President George W. Bush, 2002
The average American generates about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year from personal transportation, home energy use and from the energy used to produce all of the products and services used [1]. With over 303,000,000 citizens, the US alone has an enormous challenge to reduce carbon emissions. The modest goal of this project is to offset at minimum 15,000 pounds of carbon, the amount that the average American consumes annually. The fact that so many real promises from so many people are required to offset the impact of one individual is in itself a demonstration of the difficulties of altering human behavior to slow climate change.
Today’s eco-friendly actions tend to involve enticing people to buy environmentally sound products or services rather than cutting back on energy usage. Unfortunately, the act of consumption is precisely the behavior that needs curtailment. For example, we cannot take a capitalistic approach to the threat of climate change by encouraging individuals to purchase items like carbon offsets to assuage their guilt. Paying a little extra for certain goods and services is not going to be enough to halt the warming of the planet [2].
There is an urgent need in the western world to take real responsibility for individual actions rather than to simply buy our way toward environmental stewardship. We must work toward a wider, societal transition to a low carbon economy,while simultaneously taking direct responsibility for reducing our personal emissions.
- climatecrisis.net
- More information about the ironic myths of carbon neutrality: carbontradewatch.org