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-   -   How do you offset the pollution created with your drives/rides? (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/street-experiences/264737-how-do-you-offset-pollution-created-your-drives-rides-3.html)

Moving abroad and covid has made my CO2 emission considerably less without any deliberate effort from my part.

• Post covid I work from home completely
• I don't own a car in berlin and hence I use public transport for all my commutes. Berlin is well connected and I have never felt the need to own a car here. I hire taxi only when I travel to India.
• I walk to drop my kid to her kindergarden which is around 3 Kms round trip
• I have a small balcony garden
• We don't use gas in our apartment. We have induction stoves and electric floor heating. Also we subscribe to a renewable source electricity connection

But on the flip side, when I arrive in India I drive around 5000Kms.
Also when I calculated my round trip to India it says CO2 emission is at 7.5 Ton :unhappy
And on top of that, most of the vegetables, fruits and meat available here are imported and that also adds to the emission

If you do offset by purchasing carbon credits, it's very important to do your homework. Don't assume that all offset mechanisms are equal - your rupee goes much further with some than with others. Clickbait title below, but the video is worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW3gaelBypY

I live in Bangalore:

I go to great lengths to plan my life to avoid the traffic, hence less driving.
I don't use heating/cooling as it's a naturally climate-controlled city with regular power cuts.
I consume less due to high cost of living and poor purchasing power.
I elect corrupt and inefficient governments to ensure less developmental activity and lesser impact on the environment.

Okay, I'm just kidding. I have two six cylinder powered fuel guzzler cars. Though I don't drive much and they are low mileage 10+ year old cars, I guess I would be a hypocrite to claim any carbon credits.

Any discussion around climate change looks very superficial to me. First, a good part of the world lives in 50deg summers and -20deg winters that are perfectly climate controlled. Second, every corporation, doesn't matter if it's producing EVs, windmills, solar panels, vegan food, etc. is a relentless machine that is enabling never ending production and consumption. I am not sure if making lives infinitely more comfortable and creating ginormous wealth is compatible with saving the environment - it will mostly end up as propaganda and window dressing.

I do buy LED lamps, but, c'mon who am I kidding? The unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding us all towards an inevitable death :D

Not all EVs charge from fully renewable sources. Most of the world's power plants still use fossil fuels to generate power. So, the majority of EVs still significantly use such power to charge their batteries. The emissions resulting from the production and transportation of fossil fuels are applicable to EVs as well.

More than how we drive we need to take a look at how and what we eat. In Pune particularly, as it may also be in other large cities, I have observed an incredible rise in ' small-medium' size establishments. For every one km, there are atleast 3-4 eateries plus, an equally large number of small shops. Each of these account for traffic for material delivery, customers, shop employees etc. Why are civic authorities so liberal?
Also look at the enormous rise of processed and packaged food availability, to the extent that there is scarcity of some fruits for regular purchase. Nowadays you can buy any food in packaged form. There is enormous wastage of food material in the quest of hygiene/ quality. Do we really need to have 100 different brands of sweet and savory food in one city? Not to mention the packaging material that goes as plastic waste. Do we not need to regulate this ?

My only real step in this direction has been to buy a fat tyred e-bike which can flow with the regular traffic. This has eliminated my daily petrol use, except on rainy days. I’ve lost ten kilos as well. Our next house may just be a mud or part-mud structure and will probably use solar.

Otherwise I believe the change has to be systemic and the idea of a personal carbon footprint is mostly a way to guilt trip individuals. I like to believe a world in which people are fed and clothed and housed without any obligation to find work and pay for all of the above is economically viable. I think that if people are cared for they mostly want to contribute annd will voluntarily find ways to stay busy. And this may be the only way to save the environment. Otherwise the pressures of providing well paid employment to our massive population are too great, and sustainability falls by the wayside.

That's true.

Any organization in Canada can buy a certificate at approx. 25K CAD, which certifies that all your consumptions are from renewable sources. They may be allocating (virtually) Hydro power or solar farm produced capacity against each certificate.

Did we really go CO2 neutral with these steps? God knows. Just look like a scam. You can be as dirty (CO2 emission wise) as possible until you are ready to pay for this. So Co2 has opened up a new market for sure.

Curious to know which of the two options below leaves a smaller carbon footprint, and how one would calculate the same.

1. A small petrol (1.2L) engined BS4 car used for 30 years, averaging 10,000 km per year, pristinely maintained;
versus
2. A small petrol (1.2L) powered BS4 car used for 15 years, averaging 10,000 km per year, pristinely maintained and subsequently scrapped, followed by another small petrol (1.2L) powered BS6 car for the next 15 years.

Or consider another scenario:

1. A diesel (2.0-2.5L) engined BS4 car used for 20 years, averaging 10,000 km per year, pristinely maintained;
versus
2. A diesel (2.0-2.5L) engined BS4 car used for 10 years, averaging 10,000 km per year, pristinely maintained and subsequently scrapped, followed by another similar diesel (2.0-2.5L) powered BS6 car for the next 10 years.

This must also take into account the pollution caused by the process of manufacturing a new car and scrapping the old one.

While that 'individual opinion' post is based on the very very long-term assumptions of all things being ephemeral in terms of the living age of the earth, and all the pollution and activities by us altering the mother-nature will be reversed through a catastrophic calamity like tectonic movements etc., or some extreme climate changes to make the human race or any living being extinct from the earth (like what happened to the Dinosaurs) sans some fittest micro-organisms are something beyond the scope of the discussion of this thread, you rightly mentioned.

Indeed, if we focus on the issue by shrinking the timeline from some million years to some hundreds, or say, some decades ahead from now on (given the exponential curve of development in modern civilization packed with automation and technologies), each one of us, at least, can minimize/ compensate/ do something or add our two cents in keeping the earth greener and a better living place for all of us, or for generations to come. Happy to see positive opinions are pouring in through many other responses as yours.:thumbs up

Noob question, and going OT, sorry about that.

What does planting a tree to offset carbon emissions entail?

If they (the purveyors of tree planting) plant saplings, then are they saying that these saplings would have been allowed to die and rot, if someone hadn't swooped in and funded their planting?

Don't the said saplings absorb carbon and grow, no matter where they are if they are not allowed to die? Are we then just facilitating their relocation?


OR, is it some sort of tree production line? wherein our taking some saplings off their hands means that they can germinate more from seeds?

In either case, why wait for someone (corporations, individuals, whoever)? why not do it anyway (governments)?

__________________________________________________ ______________

Without getting into the politics of it, as an engineer, I appreciate the following:

There is an elegance to utilizing energy that is already available without ruining something else in the process.

__________________________________________________ ______________

To answer the OP's question:

As a petrol head I am super guilty of changing my car (after 5 years) when there was no real need to. I will actively try to fight the urge the next time.
However, I consume very little in other aspects of my life (monumentally so, compared to the average westerner) and kind of feel that this little bit of indulgence is okay.
Actively consuming less is key. Amassing concrete structure after concrete structure; indulging in fast fashion; buying things just to flex etc., is not going to be offset in any way. Digging stuff up from the ground and converting it to other stuff is always going to be energy intensive. The financial incentive for using means to do so, that do not emit carbon (barring the case of a few consumer goods which only the wealthy can afford) simply doesn't exist across the spectrum. All products are not going green in a hurry. So consume less, if you care.

Want to know your carbon footprint? Check here please - https://www.wren.co/
Note: Pls give a try, its quite interesting

Interesting thread for sure. Read through lot of arguments and ways some people are going about it. One recurring point I saw - logistics of planting trees and ensuring they're taken care of seems to be one of the "challenges".
As much as i want to avoid sounding like suggesting a solution that's like throwing money at it, there is this organization called sankalptaru (https://sankalptaru.org) that takes donations on a per tree basis and uses that money to find afforestation and saplings (fruit bearing mainly) for farmers across the country. You can choose the afforestation initiative or specific tree also.

Not affiliated with them but have been donating since about three years now (since bhpian saikarthik told me about it). Each tree is geotagged and photos uploaded that you can check in also.

Does no one see the 'big picture' ?

People (majorly westerners & the affluent rich in developing countries) go on airline trip holidays - think of the amount of jet fuel (the mode of transportation that adds CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate on par with industrial production factories, far higher than the rate of other 'transport' solutions like cars, trains, ships etc) that is burnt. Morover, they travel with the full 30kg baggage allowance both onward and return (half the items within baggage are making the trip without getting used) -- what if people simply 'avoid' flying holidays ?

That would contribute a million fold towards reducing carbon footprint, rather than measures like 'being vegetarian for a few days of the week' , 'walk to work, rather than use my bike' , 'use LED lights in my house' etc etc

If people really want to 'care' for their environment, and actually want to reduce their carbon footprint, that's the kind of 'major lifestyle change' human beings need to adopt. Will they ? They won't. That's because 'pleasure' and 'convenience' is more important than environment. Hence, all the "small steps" , "my small contribution" that we read in this thread, is nothing other than "trying to please one's own conscience" rather than actually making any real world difference.

Every tiny step helps ? no it doesn't. Big steps are needed, even to make a tiny difference.
1000 tiny steps from 1000 people is more than offset by that one holiday traveller who decides to stuff that extra 5kg of clothes into his/her checkin baggage (to make the baggage hit the checkin limit) for their annual holiday across a continent.

Nothing is more effective than human beings stopping 'burning carbon' for pleasure/entertainment (even using the internet for entertainment, playing playstation games, all that is releasing CO2, contributing plastic etc) - is that possible ? No. End of discussion.

Humanity is progressively consumerist, progressively industrial, progressively seeking convenience, progressively seeking pleasure. That's the nature of the human species, it can't be stopped whatsoever. It will lead to alterations in the biosphere that eventually transforms it into an uninhabitable form for humans, and result in the extinction of homo sapiens.

So what ? Isn't the cyclical nature of life forms emerging, surviving and perishing, the fundamental tenet of 'life on earth' ? Then what are we trying to achieve via the discussion in this thread ? Look at the biggest picture we can see.

I know that I cannot match the carbon footprint I owe. Imagine the energy which went into making each and every part of our cars. From the valve in the tyre to the power window switch. We just try to match the fuel we consume! Electric car? If I buy another car, electric or otherwise, I am already buried 100 meters under the carbon load, even without cranking it once.

I ensure that I am not wasting valuable resources, but I do not try to plant trees to offset my carbon footprint. It is another thing that I have some 100 plants in my two balconies, but that is all.

By the way, the energy I consumed to write this post is equivalent to a shrub dying somewhere.

British Petroleum created the concept of carbon footprint to direct people's attention away from the fact that the majority of global warming is cause by large industrial companies. For example, the sixteen largest ships emit the same amount of CO2 as all the world's cars, yet they try to guilt shame the common peasant (us people) since we and our cars are an easy target.