bmclaughlin807

Lifetime Odometer: 12,446 miles

That's miles logged since June 1st, 2006. Now... how many dollars is that?

filtersweep

Care to explain how legit carbon credit trading is a scam?

bmclaughlin807

So... stay car free AND buy carbon offsets. Or just donate to a cause that you know supports clean power or some such (If you want to do away with the middleman's cut)

Then you'd be doing twice as much for the environment.

The good thing about the carbon offset programs is that it gets more money out there that's designated for clean energy. The more money we invest in clean energy, the cheaper it will get, and the sooner we can wean ourselves off of petroleum products and other dirty energy sources.

Artkansas 

lyeinyoureye

Methane has 60+ times the GWP of Carbon Dioxide.

We'd be peachy keen if all it did was raise the temperature by a degree over the entire globe and leave everything else intact. The problem is, it isn't, and like won't, do that. It has, and likely will, continue to upset the weather and climate patterns we enjoy. This wouldn't be a problem, except that people have already established themselves around the globe in places suitable to their living arrangements for the most part. If we start changing everything around, since we've, for the most part, picked the best spots to live, we're gonna end up dealing with more crap down the road such as, higher frequency Cat 4-5 storms, the reduction in range and intensity of the oceanic conveyor and hotter summers, cooler winters, droughts, floods, etc... that goes with zat, increases in crop failures and yields, displacement of people due to very large changes in weather, etc... It's kinda like playing musical chairs with weather and society. Given that most have adapted relatively well to the situation, if we start shaking crap up, all we're causing is grief.

Based on active Carbon trading, around $15-20, depending on the exchange rate.

Criticisms.

Roody

You're talking about weather in your own backyard when the issue is wide-scale climate change. Pretty ignorant, no offense.

gwd

Thanks for the info. As someone else mentioned, we could pool our carfreeness to get the 10,000 metric tons.

rhm

I'm with ChipSeal on this one.

Carbon credits are like papal indulgences. I'm sitting ini front of a pc with two screens, under an incandescent bulb, in a room with eight or ten florescent bulbs, an air filter going nearby... sipping at hot coffee... and all this is being powered by a coal burning station somewhere not very far away. No matter how far I rode on my bike to get here, I have done nothing to offset the burning of that coal. This morning's bicycle commute was not even carbon neutral: I got a flat tire, used up two patches in an unsuccessful attempt to fix it, and now the whole tube is shot, so now I will be responsible for a factory in Taiwan to make me a new one. It's ridiculous to think that I could somehow ride my bike a little farther to offset these emissions, so the idea that I could pay someone else to ride his bike is no better. The only way any of us can reduce our emissions is by reducing our emissions; why is that so hard to understand?

Roody

I hope you're at work as you wrote that, as those are all factors you could improve at home. I know most of us have little control over the practices of our employers.

But you make some very good points. When it comes to pollution, there are several problems worse than cars--food production, home heating/cooling and electricity generation. The latter two factors are bigger contrigutors to global warming than cars.

If you're carfree for environmentalist reasons, you should also look into a smaller home, efficient appliances, and eating organic food and less meat.

lyeinyoureye

It's not hard to understand, just hard to swallow. For those whose revenue stream depends on fossil fuel consumption that is. So, we have these indulgences in order to encourage continued use and keep profits up, even if they do little or nothing.

Artkansas 

But it's like giving crack addicts money. It enables them to persist in bad behaviors.

Booger1

What kind of "clean energy" are you planning on using that doesn't use metal or wood and some kind of lubrication in order to make it?? Wind mills,NO...solar panels,NO... water driven something or other,NO.We could kill all the cows,never chop down another tree,that would be a good start.Even the bikes we all love are not pollution free.This whole green thing is way out of control.

The poor Earth has been belching out lord knows what out of volcanos for millions,if not billions of years,and these green head ding-dongs are trying to tell me that all of this is cause by cars and industry in the last 100 or so years?The lastest poster boy,Al Gore,preaching green crap,as he's FLYING around the world.If he was really worried about it ,we would see him in China and India giving pollution speeches. He DID invent the internet you know,GIVE ME A BREAK....

Unless your planning on digging a hole somewhere and living in it,and surviving on roots and grass that you dig up with your bare hands,making your clothes to keep warm out of some kind of plants with your bare hands,never start a fire to keep warm or make some kind of metal tools,we're all part of the problem,animals included.

Just do the best you can,ride your bike when you can,try to limit your water/soil pollution the best you can,recycle stuff when you can.

I say it's all the cavemens fault for discovering fire.....

bmclaughlin807

Damn. You're absolutely right. Guess I'll just go out and buy a Hummer.

makeinu

Perhaps something like this could be organized by the League of American Bicyclists. The proceeds could then go towards bicycle advocacy or, even better, be used to build better cycling facilities (bike lockers, etc).

If this sounds practical to the rest of you then perhaps we should try to bring it to the League.

gosmsgo

I dont know but I'm sure nobel peace prize winner Al "too fat to bike" Gore burned up way more fossil fuels this morning in his private jet than you have saved.

Maybe if you increased your CO2 output by 1,000,000% you to could win some sort of prize.

What a joke.

Platy

Actually, that's a question that's being taken seriously. Some analysts aren't sure that an energy economy based only on renewable sources can support its own industrial infrastructure. Or more precisely, after you expend the electricity you need to build the windmills and solar cells, will there be enough left over to make it all worth while.

gosmsgo

Thats why conservation is going to have to be key if we ever get off fossil fuels.

Most people are driving around everywhere convinced that there is this new energy source on the horizon unaware of the law of conservation of energy says that energy is neither created nor destroyed.

Oil is a gift from god and just one tanker truck of gasoline represents 22 MILLION man hours of labor before the industrial revolution.

We use it to haul our one kid around in an 2,000 pound vehicle instead of saving it for what is really good for like plowing ground or running a combine.

Crazy.

bike2math

From an enviromental standpoint, I think the best use of carbon credits is when people/organizations/companies who have no intention of using them buy them. In fact I believe some of the companies participating in carbon trading are trying to ban traders who buy credits but don't use them. As bicyclists we wouldn't be helping by selling credits, it will just drive down the cost of polluting. All in all it is BS though, so trade away with a semi-clear conscious. We have a hard enough time making sure companies are correctly reporting their accounting and paying the correct taxes. Does anyone really expect a company to correctly report and pay for carbon credits?

jamesdenver

I have to agree. I find the whole carbon credits concept totally asinine. It's hype, sales, and marketing from companies and marketers that want to get in on the green game:

I wrote a post about it for Monday's "blog action day." This sums it up:

https://www.futuregringo.com/index.ph...y-being-green/

Roody

Your sarcastic "solution" is absurd, although very typical of modern American thought.

The basic problem is that we ask for too much, and we live in a manner that can't last more than a few generations (if that long).

We have brains, we have reason, we have beautiful technology. These human qualities could sustain us and the planet--comfortably--for eternity, almost.

The thing that's working against us is greed. We always pursue the maximum rather than optimum.