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27 Feb 2021 : Carbon Cancel Culture #
In an ideal world with a circular economy, it might be possible to achieve something close to a carbon-neutral lifestyle. Right now this is not so easy. Even with our best efforts, and while living in lockdown, Joanna and I still managed to produce nearly 9 tonnes of CO2 last year.

So, whilst reducing production is always the best goal, it's still necessary to think about what to do with the remaining output. A quick search on the Internet will reveal a massive choice of carbon offsetting schemes, and when I looked into it last year I was basically overwhelmed. There's plenty of advice (is it good advice?) to suggest which schemes to go for. There's plenty of advice (is it good advice?) telling you that it's a pointless exercise. I don't know whether it's worth it or not, but at worst it's an opportunity to be scammed, while at best it might actually be doing some good. That pushes the risk-reward balance over into the positive for me.

Last year I ended up using Karbonaut to offset my output. The words on the website made it look legitimate with claims to be contributing to "Gold Standard" projects. But in practice I wasn't going on much. Well, Karbonaut is now "closed", which isn't a good sign. Not that I'm suggesting it isn't legitimate, but at least it meant this year I had to start my search all over again.

So, it was with some relief and happiness that I discovered that the UN runs a centralised carbon offsetting platform as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. You don't have to be a government or company to use it, any individual can just rock up at offset.climateneutralnow.org and use it to contribute to a carbon offsetting project. The money goes directly to the project you choose and there's plenty of in-depth documentation about every project to help decide which to go for.

At the end of the process you even get a convincing looking Voluntary Cancellation Certificate. If you're thinking of offsetting your carbon footprint, I strongly recommend it.
 
Cancellation Certificate from offset.climateneutralnow.org

 

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