what the hell is a carbon offset?

I visited the Field Museum a few weeks ago and when I bought my ticket I was asked if I wanted to buy a carbon offset for $1, which I did and then immediately wondered where my dollar went. I mean, I’m paying whom for what?

The Field Museum’s carbon offsets are purchased from the Chicago Climate Exchange, “the world’s first and North America’s only active voluntary, legally binding integrated trading system to reduce emissions of all six major greenhouse gases (GHGs), with offset projects worldwide.” Wow. It’s like the stock exchange, but with gas. Or anti-gas, I suppose. The Beano of stocks? Okay, enough.

That’s great for companies, but what can we do about our individual dirty footprints?

At climatecrisis.net, they’ll calculate an index of what your carbon footprint is. I travel to Asia twice a year, so my carbon footprint is a 9.85, much higher than the average 7.5. If you go to nativeenergy.com, the company responsible for (ostensibly) reducing Al Gore’s carbon footprint, they make it more complicated, showing an animation you have to interpret to understand your impact on the environment. (My animation looks dirty and the flowers around it are dead.)

So what does nativeenergy.com recommend? That I buy some carbon offsets, of course. They’ll even go ahead and charge my credit card monthly if I so desire.

When you go to “check out,” it looks like you’re putting money ($168/yr, in my case) toward wind-powered energy or reducing methane emissions—carbon offset projects, both of which are great—but then you read the explanation:

"The projects are currently under contract with us, and we will make this purchase for you when your project or projects achieve commercial operations (it is our contract to do so that the projects rely on to proceed with development and construction)."

Sooooo…How long might they hold my money? What if the projects never “achieve commercial operations”? What does that parenthetical mean?

It makes me glad to read that there are so many companies out there committed to reducing their carbon bootprint, but I have to admit I’m still skeptical when it comes to purchasing offsets for myself.

For more info on the CCE, visit www.chicagoclimatex.com.