Carbon Offsets are a Good Thing (but it won’t cure your guilt)

By Daniel Del Grande, Owner and Brewer, Bison Organic Beer

I have no guilt about my carbon footprint, and I’ve thought about it a lot.

Guilt (g[i^]lt), noun, A state of mind in one who has broken a moral or political law

I’ve learned that you don’t have to suffer to be green or sustainable and I’m therefore lucky to live a very good American life, guilt free. I make good consumer decisions; avoid the throw away economy; reduce, reuse, recycle; advocate for change; and I buy carbon offsets for the impacts I can’t avoid. I can do this with a clear conscious. Carbon offsets are not a fashionable "green" consumer product.

How do carbon offsets work? Carbon offsets provide financial support for low-carbon infrastructure such as programs that preserve forests, fund sustainable development and invest in renewable energy technologies. When you buy carbon offsets for your unavoidable lifestyle, patronize projects that invest in ways to burn less, use less, and waste less. Your offsetting can help encourage healthier and more sustainable practices around the world.

If you have guilt for your carbon intensive lifestyle, then carbon offsets are a poor excuse for your indulgences. Carbon offsets should not be used as permission to pollute, allowing us to engage in carbon intensive consumer behaviors with a free conscience. Step one is being a good consumer.

Step two is buying carbon offsets. You can read about 10 consumer behaviors you can successfully implement on my recent blog post to learn about 10 sustainable attainable New Year Resolutions you can implement as a consumer right away without painful changes to our rich American lifestyle.

I recommend you buy carbon offsets annually. When you study resources such as these sites, you will learn that home energy use, low efficiency automobiles, and air travel are the three largest chunks of our carbon footprint. The process of buying your own carbon offset makes the invisible visible, and you can then take measurable steps as a consumer to reduce your footprint over the next 12 months when you’ll again buy carbon offsets, but fewer than the previous year!

Offsetting makes sense, but so does living more sustainable. We should all buy local, and used cars, airplanes and appliances less. Consumers should avoid processed foods, consumer products with excessive packing, plastic crap you will soon throw away, spraying herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizer in your yard, etc. American consumers look for value, and if the externalized environmental costs of consumer products were included in the shelf price, and the impact of their choices are made clear, they'll change their behavior. The rest of our impact can be responsibly taken care of with carbon offsets.