[AGL] carbon neutral text 1

[Harry Edwards]

For those of you unable to access the link I previously emailed. This 
is worth reading.       twisty d

June 25, 2006

A New Way to Ask, 'How Green Is My Conscience?'
By CHRISTINE LARSON (NY Times)


WHEN Anne Pashby moved to Baltimore last year, she was dismayed by the 
complexity of recycling in her new city.

  "I can never get it right about which day is paper versus cardboard 
versus cans," said Ms. Pashby, 38, a human resources manager. "So I've 
given up on it."

But she wasn't ready to give up on the environment. Looking for an 
easier way to make her life greener, she tried a "carbon calculator" at 
the Web site of the Conservation Fund (conservationfund.org). She 
learned that the events of her everyday life, like driving the car, 
heating her home or taking plane trips, produced about 14 tons a year 
of carbon emissions, or "carbon footprint." The Conservation Fund, a 
nonprofit group in Arlington, Va., offered to neutralize that amount 
for $57, by planting 11 trees in the lower Mississippi Valley — enough 
to remove 14 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. She happily 
complied.

"It felt pretty good," she said. "I could pat myself on the back and 
not lay out a whole lot of cash."

Call them green upgrades: easy ways for consumers to help the 
environment without changing their behavior. Such upgrades have been 
proliferating: Skiers, for example, can spend an extra $2 at some 
resorts to offset the pollution produced in a drive to the mountains; 
the money goes to environmental organizations. On Web sites like 
TerraPass.com or CoolDriver.org, drivers can total a car's pollution 
for a year and direct a corresponding sum to clean-energy projects.

Similar opportunities to become "climate neutral" can be found at 
concerts, music festivals and sports events, and even while shopping: 
On June 9,  Gaiam, a retailer in Broomfield, Colo., that sells products 
including solar lighting and organic cotton sheets, started offering a 
$2 "carbon neutral" shipping option, with the money going to the 
Conservation Fund to plant trees.

Green upgrades appeal to a sense of personal responsibility. "I like 
the idea that I pollute this much, so I pay this much," said Morgan 
Waters, 36, a physician from Sacramento. Last fall, he paid about $40 
through TerraPass, a Web-based, for-profit company in Menlo Park, 
Calif., to offset emissions from his Volkswagen Jetta. TerraPass 
channels the money to projects promoting green power and industrial 
efficiency. He also pays an extra $6 a month to his local electric 
company for renewable energy.

The challenge for consumers is to understand exactly what their money 
goes for, and how much the upgrades actually help the environment.

Some are easy to grasp. At the Lenox, a hotel in Boston, the Eco Chic 
package, at $309, costs more than a usual one-night stay ($239 and up). 
In return, guests get breakfast, passes for Boston public 
transportation — so they don't have to drive a car — and a copy of "The 
Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice 
from the Union of Concerned Scientists." And the hotel buys enough 
renewable power to offset the greenhouse gas produced during the 
guest's stay: about 52 pounds of carbon emissions a night.

Other green upgrades may be more complicated.

"I was thinking about buying green energy, but when I looked into it, I 
found so many different options," said Zoë Chafe of Washington, a 
researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research 
group. "Some were through the electric company; others were saying, 
'Put your money here and you'll help us start a manure farm that will 
generate alternative energy.' "

About 20 percent of the nation's utilities offer customers so-called 
green power. In Sacramento, Dr. Waters participates in the Greenergy 
program offered by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which 
totals his electricity use and tries to buy an equivalent amount of 
power from a wind farm or other renewable-energy supplier. But there 
aren't enough clean-power plants in Sacramento, so the utility also 
buys renewable-energy certificates, or "green tags," from wind farms 
elsewhere. The tags certify that a clean-energy company somewhere sold 
a certain quantity of power.

When consumers lack the option locally, they can buy their own green 
tags or other "carbon offset products," like financing efforts for 
clean-energy projects and reforestation elsewhere in the country. For 
instance, Ms. Chafe came across NativeEnergy, a private company whose 
majority owners are 11 Native American tribes in the Dakotas, Nebraska 
and Wyoming. For $8 a month, it offsets 100 percent of customers' 
electrical use by supporting farm methane projects that harness gas 
produced by cow manure. The company is based in Charlotte, Vt.