6.82 tonnes!

holy smokes, my round trip between toronto and bangkok (with stops in chicago & tokyo) will release 6.82 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! even worse, much of that junk will be into the upper atmosphere where it's effect is generally considered much worse from a climate change perspective, my "raised catholic" guilt is starting to kick in...

... thankfully, much like the catholic church of old, i've just bought a dispensation. well, a carbon offset at least. a carbon offset, in case this is a new idea to you, is a way to try and mitigate the climate changing effects of our decadent (from an energy and resource use perspective [well, and i guess from every other perspective too]) western lifestyle by investing in carbon reduction projects elsewhere. david suzuki calls it becoming carbon neutral, a sort of macro 'leave no trace' ethos if you will, not perfect but better than nothing.

i'm hoping this is a more meaningful gesture than simply giving money to some pope. i did some research, looked around and finally settled on planetair.ca for my offsets. they're a non-profit run through unisféra international centre in montreal and are the only canadian vendor of gold standard credits, so i'm pretty sure they're legit and aren't going to spend my money on expensive yachts.

so grand total to offset the carbon emissions for my trip?

$178.74 CAD

of course, this being canada that includes 6%gst & 7%qst (montreal remember?) ... now if only i knew some policy makers working on the green file. maybe making carbon offsets tax exempt would be a good announcable. hrm.

19 days 12 hours until my first flight takes off!