Progressive Wednesday

The Grandeur of Earth Day: Air

April 11th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

Air:

To make a bad play on words, our air is starting to seriously blow. The average American, that’s you and that’s me, spews about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year into the only air we’ve got. How? By moving our bodies from A to B without using our legs. By cranking the heat in the winter and revving up the A/C come August. By buying, well, by buying just about anything, since those “things” — Legos, Eggos, leggings, and eggs — only come to be through production that burns fossil fuels.

If you really want to face the atmospheric music, use this carbon calculator or this one or this one or this one. From these sites, you can find easy things you can do around the house to reduce the poisonous emissions from fossil fuels. Remember: doing something is better than nothing, because each of our little “somethings” add up, baby, they add up. We’ve mentioned some of these before (just click this sentence to see what we’re talkin’ ‘bout). This week, we’ve got a different suggestion: purchasing off-setting carbon funds from Terra Pass.

These aren’t exactly the oft-discussed emission trading (sometimes referred to as “carbon credits”), though those are better than doing jack squat. Even entire governments are falling into the mind-trap that suggests that emission trading makes it okay to burn more fossil fuels. It doesn’t. The idea is to still minimize our use of fossil fuels, and not just for the environment, but for economic and political reasons as well. The less we rely on oil from countries that don’t play nice (though, we’re not exactly one to talk these days), the less we’ll end up, theoretically, embroiled in trade conflicts at best, and at worst, more wars.

But, Terra Pass is something to consider snagging. Even if you own a hybrid car, you’re still pumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the only air we’ve got. These are poisons. They will kill you, and they will kill our air, which will in turn kill the water, the plants, other animals.

Through Terra Pass, you calculate the average greenhouse gas emissions of your vehicle of choice (or the flights you take or the kind and amount of energy you use at home). Then Terra Pass lets you know which level of membership you’ll need to help offset your emissions. They use a bulk of the money to help fund clean energy projects – wind farms, biomass, and industrial efficiency. The only problem we see on the surface of Terra Pass is that word “Pass.” We can’t get a “pass” for our emissions. Our emissions are still being made. With Terra Pass, we’re helping to prevent even more from going up to the stratosphere. The less up there, the better.

Need convincing? Reread our TGIF Movie Review of An Inconvenient Truth, then rent the sucker. Honestly, every week I think of the movie at least once when I’m on pause — not reading, not typing, not driving, not chatting it up on my cell, not gettin’ jiggy wit it — when I’m on pause and just breathing. I feel thankful. Then I feel a twinge of fear about the future.