skippy the bush kangaroo

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

if the right wing really worried about gas emissions, limbaugh would be in jail

needlenose explains the fake brou-ha-ha brewing over al gore's electricity bill:

the vrwc just can't stand the thought of al gore being lauded for his environmental work and getting an award for it. so they put out a hit piece accusing gore of, um, having a high utility bill (!)

in response, gore pointed out that he's taken measures to not only calculate his family's carbon footprint, but also offset it by purchasing credits. never having heard of the practice, i decided to do a little research and share it with our readers.

the concept is pretty simple: calculate how much greenhouse gas your household generates then purchase renewable energy credits (rec) to offset them. until very recently rec's could only be purchased by businesses. then someone (the people behind greentags claim they were the first) had the idea to act as a 'bundler' and group a number of individual contributions to create a larger purchasing pool, then use the money to buy rec's -- just like the big boys…
first, you have to get a rough estimate of how much greenhouse gas your household is generating. al gore likes to point at the carbon calculator which offers a highly dumbed-down simplified method. they also list the national average as 7.5 tons per household, however, other sources put the average at 12.4 or even up to 17.5 tons…

once you get the footprint number, you round it out then head on over to any number of places where consumers can purchase renewable energy credits online. al gore himself points to nativeenergy's individual carbon offset purchase page, where you can enter the number of tons and see how much per month or year it would cost to offset your carbon use. there are many other sites like greentags or carboncounter, and it's good to have options. to give you a rough estimate, my own three-person household with moderate driving and air-travel came in at around 4 tons, which ended up running around $50 per year to zero out.

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posted by skippy at 8:49 AM |

1 Comments:

Related, but a lot of trash comes in the form of junk mail. Last year I signed up via 41pounds.org to reduce the catalogs and junk mail I receive (amazing how ordering once from Pottery Barn Kids gets you on every list imaginable!). Small price that lasts for a few years and I've already seen the drop in crap I get in my mail box. There are other companies out there as well.

In addition to off-setting with carbon credits, check your current Utility company as many offer green-friendly options for a very small additional cost.
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 11:33 PM PST  

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