Carbon Neutral

Once again, I apologize. It’s been too long. Nevertheless, I would ask you to remember this: even if I have months-long gaps in my posting, this blog is still here. I haven’t given up on it yet. Nor do I plan to.

It’s just one thing after another these days. Ever since I moved here back in August, I haven’t been overtaxed, but just busy enough too limit blogging. Moving in requires buying many new things, like furniture, which requires time-intensive shopping. And I have been socializing quite a bit, getting to know my fellow comrade grad students, playing occasional jams with Kevin & Co. over at St. Andrew’s (to play his compositions for services). I’ve made a lot of new friends, and I have kept up with some of you old ones out there with personal emails. That’s better than mass mailings or indiscriminate blog posts, right? I guess I still have to apologize for those who were left out of the loop.

And once something moves out of the front of your mind, it’s difficult for it to work its way back in. For example, I still haven’t followed through on my promise to tell everyone where my new album(s) are available for download. Yeah, plural--we’ll get to that in a moment. Many of you I told in person; many were informed through Facebook. My dad even posted the JoelTed link in the comments to one post. Still, for the record:
JoelTed-- download.com/joelabrahamson
JTAKRA--wu.elixant.com/jtakra

OK, so what is JTAKRA? Well, that’s the OTHER album I did this summer. When I came home to North Dakota, my sister was waiting for me with a bunch of cello and piano duet music. I hadn’t played piano seriously for a while, so I gladly agreed to play with her. A good, fun way to keep the skills up. Then, since she joined my record label, I thought it might be a good goal to record an album in July before we left for backpacking on Isle Royale (another story! agh! I was behind before…). We settled on two pieces, Elgar’s Cello Concerto (piano plays the orchestra reduction) and the Beethoven Sonata for Cello and Piano, Opus 102, No. 1. I’m quite pleased with the results of only about six weeks of work. So go check that one out too. There are liner notes there as well. Hosting is graciously provided by our friend Lushen Wu.

I also promised many people that I would post pictures of my new apartment when I got it together. Well, it’s together… but I haven’t taken the pictures yet. You’ll have to wait on that one.

Finally, we come to the real reason for the post. I am very happy and proud to announce today that I am “carbon neutral,” having purchased “offsets” for the greenhouse gas emissions from my apartment, car travel, and plane travel. What this means is that I have invested a certain sum of money in projects that will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by an equivalent amount those for which I am responsible. This is a similar system to the one in Europe (and the one about to be set up in California), where companies have carbon allowances every year and are allowed to trade them on a market. This way, if somebody goes over, they can pay extra to have someone else who is doing better than expected to make up for their extra emissions. Thus, good ol’ capitalism is put to work, giving business financial incentives to reduce their emissions. The carbon-trading system grew out of the Kyoto Protocol, which most developed nations have ratified, but of course, not the US. (Also, not Australia. Not sure why that is.) I will take this opportunity to remind you that President Bush did promise on the campaign trail in 2000 to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and has since completely reneged on that promise.

Basically, I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth today, and although I had been planning this move for some time, the movie reminded me of the urgency of the issue. We are already seeing effects of global climate change, and although we will not be able to stave off all the negative effects still to come, everything we do today makes the problem that much less severe. Plus, sustained action and change in policy and energy infrastructure must begin NOW to give us the best chance of stopping the worst of global warming.

I cruised over to the website associated with the film, calculated my annual carbon dioxide emissions, and followed a link to a partner site, NativeEnergy to purchase my offsets. It was very quick, and less expensive then I expected. By my estimates of driving, flying, and utility bills, I am responsible for 4.15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions this year. That sounds like a lot to me, but it’s actually quite a bit less than the 7.5 tons per year of the average American. To put it in other terms, that’s 22.7 pounds of CO2 per day, which is still almost double the average human’s emissions, and more than four times the amount the Earth can actually sustain (according to this rather informative Sierra Club article). But by buying credits in new wind power projects with NativeEnergy, I could compensate for those emissions for just $48. At this price, there really should be more people going carbon neutral.

Now, there is some debate in the carbon credit trading community about how to calculate one’s individual responsibility for emissions, so I will admit that it is possible that I have underestimated my own personal contributions to global warming. For example, another carbon offset site, The CarbonNeutral Company, says that, as an American, I am responsible for a whopping 19.9 metric tonnes (21.9 US tons) of CO2 per year. Of course, I didn’t plug any numbers into this site, so they are just assuming that I consume as much as a regular American, neglecting all my biking, bus travel, thermostat lowering (I still haven’t turned on the heat in my apartment, and it’s fine, thank you), etc. That still doesn’t explain the discrepancy between 21.9 tons and the ClimateCrisis value of 7.5 tons for the average American. Purchasing offsets for 21.9 tons costs much more (try ~$300). I think CarbonNeutral’s higher value takes into account the emissions from “infrastructure,” emissions from the university buildings I walk around in all day, from the crews that made the roads that my buses drive on. But I think I am justified in using the lower estimate, since I have made changes in my lifestyle to reduce my emissions, so therefore I should reap the benefits. Plus, calculating my share of responsibility for these “infrastructure” emissions is rather complicated, so I would rather that the individual organizations more directly responsible for these emissions deal with their own CO2. In any case, I am proud to say that now I have at least done SOMETHING. Please join me in the fight to preserve our world.