No Frills Philanthropy Project: Carbon Offsets!

The philanthropy project for the 2009 No Frills Conference aims to reduce our contributions to global warming. Attendees have an exciting opportunity to offset their carbon dioxide emissions from travel to the conference by purchasing carbon offsets. These offsets will support wind turbine or farm methane projects that will make your travel carbon neutral. Read below for more information:

What is global warming?

Global warming covers complex chemical and ecological processes resulting in the warming of the Earth's surface and atmosphere. It occurs as a result of energy from the sun being trapped by gases in the atmosphere, primarily CO2 and methane.

For over the past 200 years, the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, and deforestation have caused the concentrations of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" to increase significantly in our atmosphere. These gases prevent heat from escaping to space.

Greenhouse gases are necessary to life because they keep the planet's surface warmer than it otherwise would be. But, as the concentrations of these gases continue to increase in the atmosphere, the Earth's temperature is climbing above past levels. According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4ºF in the last 100 years. The eight warmest years on record (since 1850) have all occurred since 1998, with the warmest year being 2005. If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 3.2 to 7.2ºF above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate

(Global warming facts taken from Clean Air-Cool Planet, Environmental Protection Agency, and We Can Solve it)

Why is it important to reduce your carbon emissions?

It is important to reduce your carbon emissions to lessen the impacts of global warming. Scientists are certain that the actions taken to reduce greenhouse carbon emissions in the next few years will dramatically affect the global climate. This is often called the “tipping point” where beyond this point the worse effects of global warming will be unavoidable. A scientific consensus on the time of this tipping point has not been reached but significant reductions of greenhouse gases are needed.

The impacts of global warming are varied:

• Rising sea levels, leading to more coastal erosion, flooding during storms, and permanent inundation
• Increased drought and increased incidence of wildfires
• Severe stress on many forests, wetlands, alpine regions, and other natural ecosystems
• Impacts on human health as mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects and rodents spread diseases over larger geographical regions
• Disruption of agriculture in some parts of the world due to increased temperature, water stress, and sea-level rise in low-lying areas such as Bangladesh or the Mississippi River delta

What are carbon offsets?

Carbon offsets are a valuable mechanism to accommodate the practical limits to how much each of us can reduce our own energy use. To make up for the CO2 emissions we can't avoid, we can instead help someone reduce other CO2 emissions. They are a short-term tool to help us transform to a more sustainable economy. Carbon offsetting helps programs and activities that result in less CO2 emissions, such as establishing wind turbine or reforestation projects, that they couldn’t otherwise do.

What is the No Frills project?

All attendees are strongly encouraged to follow through with the conference theme of “Sustainable Leadership for the Future!” by offsetting their carbon emissions from travel to the conference. No Frills is supporting NativeEnergy’s carbon offset programs and schools can choose to offset their carbon emissions during registration. Donations will be used to support renewable energy wind turbine and farm methane projects. Dairy farms store manure in ponds where it is kept before being spread 2 or 3 times a year. Bacteria decomposes the manure which gives off gases including methane, another greenhouse gas. The farm methane projects install anaerobic digester systems instead of ponds. These digesters are heated, airtight systems which accelerate the decomposition and capture the methane which the farms burn to produce electricity and useful heat. This process is carbon-neutral because in addition to preventing wasteful methane emissions, the carbon emissions from the burning of the methane for heat are equivalent to the carbon sequestered in the feed and will be recaptured in the next year’s feedstock.

Please check out NativeEnergy’s website at nativeenergy.com for more information about global warming, steps to combat it, and the carbon offset programs.

Join us in making No Frills as environmentally sustainable as possible!

If your institution is unable to participate in this philanthropy project please contact Jennifer Grossman, our Sustainability and Sponsorship chair for alternative options.