Business and personal travel, which we’ve been doing a lot of the last two weeks, is a big producer of carbon in the atmosphere. I’m actually writing this on a cross Atlantic flight.
But you can offset those carbon emissions fairly inexpensively
There are a number of services on the Internet that will help you do it.
Over the last four years the Gotham Gal and I have racked up about 570 tons of carbon via air travel.
Depending on how much we spend per ton to offset it, the coast could be as low as $10,000 or as high as $60,000.
At $10,000, that is about a 3% increase to our air travel costs. At $60,000, that is about a 20% increase to our air travel costs.
There are a lot of debates about how much it should cost to offset a ton of carbon. Right now it is inexpensive because the supply of offset projects is higher than the demand for them.
But at market equilibrium, the price should be a lot higher and many people offset at the theoretical market equilibrium price not the current market price.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to this question about how much per ton you should pay for offsets. It depends on how you think about it.
Our flight today could cost as little as $100 to offset for both of us. Or as much as $600.
Either way, we are paying to reduce our carbon footprint and that is a good thing in our view.
If everyone started doing this, it would transform the carbon offset markets and lead to a lot of great projects, like reforestation and other approaches that would have a meaningful contribution to reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
