Green Tip from the UCE Green Team – 12/13/2019
Here at UCE, many of us love to travel. Others of us have work-related reasons for traveling. Yet, how do we grapple with the reality that traveling has a very detrimental impact on the climate? Per the New York Times, “going someplace far away … is the biggest single action a private citizen can take to worsen climate change. One seat on a flight from New York to Los Angeles effectively adds months’ worth of human-generated carbon emissions to the atmosphere.”*
Limiting travel is the most straightforward way to tackle the problem. However, swearing off flying completely isn’t something that most of us can (or want) to do. So, what can we do instead? Purchasing carbon offsets is an alternative where you compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions your traveling produces by donating to a project designed to reduce emissions by an equal amount. There are a lot of choices when it comes to carbon offset programs. Standards groups like The Gold Standard or Green-e are two ways of verifying that your money is used appropriately. One company that has been vetted by both the New York Times and the PBS NewsHour is Cool Effect. PBS described them as a “nonprofit … with triple-verified, financially strong and ethically sound projects to offset the traveler’s footprint.”** The New York Times travel desk uses Cool Effect to offset airplane travel by staff members on assignment.
To learn more, go to https://www.cooleffect.org and click on the Offset Travel button. The price for purchasing offsets may surprise you: a round-trip 4-6 hour flight carries a carbon-offset price tag of under $8. If you work for a business or university, encourage them to join Cool Effect’s mission at a corporate level – see this link: https://www.cooleffect.org/content/for-business for details.
Per Cool Effect, “At the end of the day, the idea is simple: Do what you can, anything that keeps the planet cooler helps! If your flight length falls between two options, Cool Effect humbly challenges you to round up! Clearly, the planet is heating up and Mother Earth appreciates every tonne that helps to keep her cool!”
References:
* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/travel/traveling-climate-change.html?module=inline