Making Reparation: Offset Your Life - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 146

Although these compromises might seem sensible, flying to this
degree would still contribute to climate change. As a result, the approach I
have sketched so far is still inadequate. A key further element, then, is the
opportunity to purchase carbon offsets for each of those flights—that is,
to contribute to organizations that use the money for projects that reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. Surprisingly, such offsets are fairly cheap: you
can offset the emission carbon dioxide through a credible and certified
organization for around $12 to $15 a ton. Doing so responsibly, however,
takes a bit of research. For such offsets to be effective, they must fund
efforts that would not otherwise take place, do not merely shift harm-
ful activities to another site, and are not already being counted under an
existing environmental policy. Furthermore, such offsets should support
interventions that truly make a difference now . If you fund projects for
planting trees, for example, they may not begin to pull carbon dioxide out
of the atmosphere for many years, and already, as I mentioned in earlier
chapters, many forests under the pressure of climate change are drying
out, decaying, and are thus on the verge of emiting more carbon diox-
ide than they absorb. It is thus much wiser to fund programs that choose
other strategies, that reduce the burning of wood or charcoal for cook-
ing fires, for example, or help construct renewable energy plants whose
power local consumers will actually use. (Those cooking fires, by the way,
typically produce great quantities of black carbon, which researchers
have recently found may be far more harmful than previously thought;
funding efforts to reduce that harm may thus be far more helpful than
we knew. 133 ) Fortunately, others have done careful research on all these
concerns and have made the results available online, along with links to
those carbon offset companies whose efforts seem to be making the most
difference.134 134
If we travel only on occasion and purchase offsets when we do so, we
would go far toward reducing our overall carbon footprint and do much
to fulfill the demand for reparation. What's more, by purchasing offsets
we would be contributing in our own small way to efforts that the inter-
national community could sponsor wholesale if it so chose; we would in
effect begin to bring about the ecological revolution we demand. By liv-
ing in this way, we would declare our commitment to that revolution and