As you will gather if you read my ramblings on a regular basis, I’ve been harping on about global warming for a while. Two weeks ago I finished reading The Weathermakers by Tim Flannery, which outlines the current state of the global warming debate. It’s not pretty, and he agrees with NASA’s James Hansen’s comment that we have ten years left to start making a serious difference to greenhouse gas levels, otherwise we will have reached a point where serious consequences are unavoidable.

So, with all that in mind, I decided it was time for me to make an effort. Since I don’t own my own home there’s not a lot I can do structurally, like install solar panels etc. so I opted to make the few changes I could, and offset those I couldn’t. It just so happened that a few weeks ago, just before I started reading Flannery’s book, I came across two separate stands in the CBD, on two separate days, at which energy companies were giving away free energy-efficient light bulbs and water-efficient shower heads. You had to provide proof-of-address, presumably so they can spam you, but I figured it was worth it. I walked away with 11 light bulbs and a shower head, went home and installed them and that was the hardest part of the whole exercise!

Next up was to ring our electricity provider, Energy Australia and tell them we wanted to switch to their PureEnergy package, where they guarantee that for every kWh you buy from them, they will source the same amount from government accredited green, renewable sources. We had to pay a 25% premium, which, based on our typical energy use, works out at about $200 per annum.

Finally, it was time to offset what was left over, namely the travel component. I wanted to offset my car usage, and all the air travel I’ve booked for my trip to Canada. There are a few companies around the world who guarantee to offset tonnes of CO₂ for a price, but I decided on ClimateFriendly.com, mainly because they agree to invest the money in developing renewable sources rather than just planting trees as other operations do. The fact that it’s an Australian operation helped too. So, I went on to their website and started using their calculators to see what I was in for:

If you exclude the air travel, which is a one off and not representative of my annual air travel, then I can offset almost all my greenhouse emissions for approximately $200 per year (given that the electricity bill is split with Jacqui) which is a pretty small price to pay if you ask me.