How Does Your Garden Offset Carbon?

That Al Gore sure can be persuasive when he isn't trying to persuade people to vote for him. The film An Inconventient Truth, which documents his journey to educate the public about global warming, has got me all fired up.  It's an amazing film and I urge you to go see it, but in case you were thinking that you'd really rather go see The Devil Wears Prada and skip all that depressing talk about the destruction of the planet, I've got good   news for you.

First, your organic garden is sequestering carbon.  That's right, by increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil, (not to mention planting a garden to begin with) you are capturing carbon emissions and keeping them out of the atmosphere.  This story on AlterNet describes one large garden, just under half an acre, that is so high in organic matter that a scientist estimated that the soil had sequestered 19 tons of carbon in ten years, which offsets about three years of an average American's carbon dioxide emisssions.

Not bad.  But wait--there's more!  You can write a surprisingly small check to help offset your family's own contribution to global warming, and you can still make the 7:15 showing of "Prada" or get another tree planted in the back forty.  Here's how it works. 

Go to this site, which was set up in conjunction with the film, and calculate your family's annual carbon dioxide emission.  You can then follow the link to "reduce your impact with Native Energy" by buying a carbon certificate that offsets your family's carbon emissions. 

Basically, your purchase helps fund renewable energy and reforestation projects that reduce global warming.  By linking your purchase to your own energy consumption, you are making your household "carbon neutral." It cost me a mere $60 to offset my entire carbon emission for the year.  What a deal.  In fact, I rounded up to $100, so I offset some of your carbon emission, too. (You can thank me later.)

Sound crazy?  The US Department of Energy doesn't think so.  Here is a link to their list of organizations that sell carbon credits.  Feel free to shop around.

Still not sure?  Here's a link to a pretty clear, concise explanation of how it works. Some organizations also buy carbon credits, taking them off the market and therefore making it more likely that a company would have to reduce pollution rather than buy credits.  (read up on that here if you're interested.)

Yes, there's lots more that we can all do to make sure that our gardens don't end up under water or in the middle of a desert over the next few decades.  And yes, turning pollution into a free market commodity is far from an ideal solution.  But this is a start, and it felt awfully damn good.

We now return to our regularly-scheduled ranting.

Comments

[susan]

TERRIFIC topic and I'll be adding my 10 cents in a new post. Susan

[Annie]

THANK YOU for giving us a bit of positive news about the environment! I know the situation is dire, and I understand that people need to be informed. But, it's so nice to hear about something I can do to help right in my own front yard. And I was doing it anyway!!

[Mary]

I just saw the movie this weekend as well and was taken back to my early college days when changing the world was a "nice thing to do"...

Thanks for the links. I felt that they needed more on the site, once people were fired up they needed more ideas on what to do next.

[kathy]

So which would help reduce carbon emmissions more on a roof with not so ideal sun exposure, an intensive roof garden to collect carbon or solar panels to reduce carbon-based electric usage? Does the depth of the soil matter? How does one figure this out, especially if they have to overcome a heavy bias in favor of the prettier option? :)