Hey all,

Please take a second to write your congressperson about Bush's proposed 40% CUT in funding for Amtrak in 2009.  Huh?  Did he miss the news?  The whole global warming, environmental thing?  The rising costs of oil?  The ugliness and pollution that cars bring?  Oh yeah, he lives on some other planet or something.  This is a copy of the letter I wrote, courtesy of Susan Och and the National Association of Railroad Passengers.  Took about 10 minutes to find my congressman, customize, proofread, and send.  I can't tell when they'll vote on it this year, but it looks like they've gotten to it in May or June in past years.  Thanks!

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Dear Congressman Rangel:  

President Bush has only requested $800 million for Amtrak in his Fiscal 2009 budget. Please work to reject this 40% cut and fully fund Amtrak. America needs passenger rail now more than ever as gas prices rise, airlines shut down, and climate change gets closer to the crisis point.

Rail is an efficient, low carbon way to travel. In Europe and Asia, they are investing in high tech trains that can travel over 250 MPH. The US should at least maintain a 20th century level train system, and consider catching up with the rest of the world.

I also urge your support for the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, S. 294. The bill provides real, meaningful reform for Amtrak and a federal-state partnership for capital investments, which is enjoyed by the other modes of transportation. Please urge House leadership to pass companion legislation.

As you know, these issues are particularly critical to the citizens of New York State, a large portion of whom do not maintain personal vehicles.  In addition to the day-to-day uses of the rail lines, train rides can provide a once-in-a-lifetime experience for cross country-travel: my parents just enjoyed our beautiful country by rail from San Diego to Seattle to Montana.  They are looking forward to exploring the state of New York in the same way.  Please continue to make this possible for future travelers.
Thank you very much for your leadership.

Sincerely,
Megan Metcalf

After some thinking, I decided that the primary function of the different companies and pricing is to quantify (our misgivings about?) personal energy use/abuse.  Which is not unimportant.  Having a price to describe something is one of the few ways I can feel objective about something.  Price is something I think I understand: tons of carbon that are invisible and impact the earth in (vastly accelerated) geological time I understand in a much less tangible way.  Offets are a product like anything else, and are treated as such: click here for a website offering to get you the lowest price on your offsets!

Of course if there's one thing this project has taught me, it's that price doesn't really tell you that much: junky products can be expensive; the simplest solutions to things are often cheap or free; and, most things don't include the real costs required to make, produce, distribute, and dispose of them.  (See The Story of Stuff for a quick synopsis.)  So that's what the projects are about.  Here, we have the pastoral illusion that Whole Foods provides us: happy cows and chickens and Joe Farmer continuing the tiny family business for eleven generations.  Wind farms in depressed economies, leafy green trees and new habitats for exotic animals, the restoration of the Great Plains Main Streets!  These companies know that this is what we want to buy; this is what they sell us.

For now, I'll take the risk of being had, of playing the fool.  The oil trader at my finance firm told me with a twinkle in his eye that he'd like to go into the offsets business, the "best fraud [he's] ever heard of.  Paying a guy in India not to drive to work today!"

To recap: in 2007, I flew round trip from New York to Burbank; New York to Oakland; New York to Sao Paulo and then from Sao Paulo to Natal; New York to Denver and then from Denver to Kalispell; New York to Sacramento; New York to Mexico City; New York to Boston; and finally, New York to Santa Ana.  According to Native Energy, that's 41,666.49 miles, 16.6 tons of carbon.  $204 to Great Plains wind energy projects.

I'm not gonna lie: largely unsatisfying.  That's a full 7% of my monthly budget.  A 7% I'd much rather spend on a nice pair of new shoes. 

So I followed Rob’s advice and investigated carbon offset providers and their projects.  My research wasn't exhaustive - I started with a Google search and then made a table of the companies that caught my eye.  All of the below options are verified by a variety of outside bodies, such as the Environmental Resources Trust.  (From what I understand, in this new industry, verification isn’t required nor standardized, so this alone isn’t an adequate measure of the quality of offsets purchased.)

TerraPass - calculated 41,423 miles flown, 16.5 tons of carbon emitted, $74.25 to offset
TerraPass was the one company I had heard of before, so that’s where I started.  I felt I learned the most from its job listings corner; while I like their enthusiasm for the for-profit model - I've worked in nonprofits, I know how little they can accomplish (though not all of them) - I don't like this little quote about products:

You are turned on by the idea of working with consumers. We sell stuff. Do you like to talk to customers? Do you have a good head for creating products that people will love?

They have a whole shopping center on their site, with icky throw-away products!  And they give you crap like stickers and bag tags if you buy their offsets! (You can op-out, though.)

In more substantive matters, and bad press aside, I felt like their projects were a little high on the technology side and a little low on the renewable side (perhaps this is a misperception?)  Their project portfolio also hasn't been updated in over a year.

Carbonfund.org - calculated 40,000 miles flown, 16.7 tons of carbon emitted, $41.80 to offset
This one seems a little nonprofitty in that their website isn’t as slick and organized as TerraPass.  I like the local focus of their projects and the wider body of verification organizations looking after their work. They support reforestation projects, which I understand aren’t that well-respected in terms of carbon sequestering or local sustainability.

Sustainable Travel International - calculated 41,000 miles flown, 18 tons of carbon emitted, $286.69 to offset
STI seems like it falls somewhere between Carbonfund and TerraPass in terms of organizational infrastructure: their website is a little nicer to look at though a little confusing.  I like that they have a spreadsheet comparing many of the products out there; TerraPass and Carbonfund aren't on the spreadsheet - which were the first two companies that came up when I googled “carbon offsets.”  The spreadsheet also contains the three projects it primarily invests in...a little sketchy.   [Update: I can’t find the spreadsheet anymore on the STI site – if you’d like to see it, email me and I will send the one I downloaded a few weeks ago.] One of STI’s three projects is very concerned with local jobs and local impact on the environment, which I like; another is Conservation International – and biodiversity is something I feel strongly about.  Plus two of their three projects are the American branches of European models and those Euros seem to be much better at not taking up so much space and resources!

Native Energy - calculated 41,667 miles flown, 16.6 tons of carbon emitted, $204.00 to offset
I like the projects Native Energy supports, mostly wind farms and methane-capture projects on family-owned dairy farms.  The for-profit company is partly owned by an organization of Great Plains Tribes, who have tremendous wind resources – it seems like an excellent money-making scheme to me.  Their website makes me think they have a very hands-on approach, which I like; I also appreciate their commitment to communities in need, like small farmers and Native Americans.

FlyNeutral - calculated 41,438 miles flown, 18 tons of carbon emitted, $135.00 to offset
FlyNeutral is an interesting enterprise: it’s a project of the Presidio School of Management, a business school.  They work entirely with the Chicago Climate Exchange, using credits to fund large-scale sustainability projects.  I interpret their model as largely theoretical and economic, which, when compared with the financial models that make the rest of the world run, aren’t so abstract after all.

So...what do you think?  Obviously there are a lot of choices...I have a feeling, though, that regardless of which offsets I buy, it is largely a symbolic gesture of responsibility on my part.  It seems that this is a little tit-for-tat when what really needs to change is policy and commerce, and in a big way.  

The way I see it, the offsets model leads to cheaper alternatives to dirty energy, which will make the cleaner alternatives grow and get incorporated into the existing infrastructure.  Which is good.  The endpoint, though, doesn't make sense: at a certain point there will be a stalemate between the very dirty energy like private jets (and even air travel in general) and the cleaner energy, which isn't perfect, of course.  There will be no more energy to offset, unless we encourage people to use more energy. Clearly this is far off, and maybe impossible, given the growth of the population and the explosion of developing nations; however, it seems that offsets are a more likely a stopgap solution for this trendy green moment, making people feel a little more "responsible" without having to examine their desires or needs.

Find below part of a conversation with my first expert guest, my relative Rob Elam, a cofounder of Propel Biofuels.  I asked him for his opinion on offsets, something I have mixed feelings about. 

Hey, Rob -

I wanted to follow up on the conversation we started about offsets at the reunion last summer.  For some context, I am keeping a blog about not buying anything new in 2007, which you may already know about.  Of course I realize that the project has a lot of "green/zero is the new black" going on," and I hope I demonstrate some self-awareness of that in my writing. Some other enviro stuff has snuck into Fix, and I'd like to explore this issue of offsets if I can.

Ironically (?) I've used the money I've saved by not buying crap for travel, which is of course so terrible for the environment.  Energy generally isn't one of my main areas of focus, as I see my single, city-livin', bike-ridin' lifestyle as pretty low impact (relatively speaking).  But now I feel I need to repent a little, having jetted to CA four times, Brazil, Mexico City, Montana, and Boston in the space of 12 months.  The easiest thing to do is surf over to TerraPass and click and charge, but what with the bad press, my general ignorance, and its scary resemblance to buying indulgences, I am given pause.  After some research, I didn't find a better alternative, just more questions.

What do you think of my current dilemma?  Should I just forget the whole thing and concentrate on taking a train next time?

Megan

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Good question. I know Tom Arnold, one of the TerraPass founders. They are a good company. It's all about the quality of the projects funded by the offsets. Do your research.

Offsets ain't perfect, but heck nothing is. We are dealing with a HUGE problem- Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Utility- energy, mobility, lifestyle, global economic and environmental impacts. China, India, Russia. Population growth. Dwindling supply of crude oil. Climate change. Poverty. War.

Offsets. Be aware and diligent. It's a start. And the emerging voluntary carbon markets, in which offsets play a big role, are important.

Don't even get me started on lifecycle CO2 emissions and energy balance. Electric cars? The energy doesn't come from the wall outlet- it comes from coal primarily, or hydro- both incredibly destructive to biodiversity and the environment. The batteries for energy storage? Mine tailings and toxins. Biofuels, nuclear, solar, wind. Trade offs to all the renewables. (Nukes are hardly renewable- the waste product is eternally toxic).

Tough choices. As educated consumers we can begin to make better choices, but be aware of corporate greenwashing and how our own lifestyles impact on our world.

-Rob