A neutral climate
Do you notice something when you think about the weather in the last few years? I notice that the weather is getting more extreme. There are more floodings. Temperatures are rising. And less snow in winters. This is caused by climate change.
What is climate change?
Climate change is something the has always been around, as long as the earth exists. In the past there have been several ice ages. In the history of the earth cooler periodes are followed by warmer ones. This is nothing out of the ordinary, scientists agree with that.
Research shows that there is a close relation between the average temperature and the amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. This is because CO2 traps heat from the sun which causes the temperature to rise.
Over the last 650 thousand years this system was in balance with high and low temperatures. The last decades show an extreme rise in the amount of CO2. This has never been seen over the period mentioned. This rise started when mankind began the industrial revolution. This change will have severe consequences if we do nothing.
The film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore explains all this in a clear way. It shows what is happening today and what will happen in the future because of global warming. I can recommend this film, if you haven’t already seen it.
Today is the release of a new film about climate change. It is ‘The 11th Hour’ by Leonardo DiCaprio. Where ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ talks about consequences of our actions, this movie gives solutions for solving the problem.
What can we do about it?
I think that ‘The 11th Hour’ will be very interesting to watch. But you do not have to wait for that, because you can do something rigth now. And it is actually very easy as well!
I have flown from The Netherlands to Canada this year. Flying is one of the biggest sources of CO2. I compensate by supporting Greenseat. You can also compensate for CO2 emissions caused by driving your car, using natural gas and electricity with Climate neutral.
All of the above combined only costs me 7 euros per month! This money is invested in projects that reduce greenhouse gases by growing new trees. If you think that all this talk about climate change is bogus, well just buy those trees to make the world a greener place 
If you want more information, go here.
Posted: September 20th, 2007 under Climate.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Arthur Sevestre
Time: 2008-10-06, 3.02 pm
Hi Jeroen,
Thanks for your comment on my blog a few weeks ago! It’s so funny that we have a number of photos from almost exactly the same spot, including a bridge in Rotterdam and some landscapes in Canada!
To the point though, I applaud your compensating of your CO2 emissions. I fear that it is not nearly enough to save the earth (or more exactly; our own species and those that we are most directly destroying) even if everybody would do it, but it certainly helps to make one’s impact smaller.
I compensate too when I travel for my photography and especially during my fieldwork trips in Canada, but have deliberately chosen not to work with a company that plants trees. The reason is that this is a very slow way of compensating because it will take many years for the trees to grow so far that there actually is a net effect, while the offsetting should be done pretty hastily to avert as much of the threatening catastrophe as possible. Besides, in some cases the trees might not even be allowed to grow that far because they will be harvested prematurely or because the space where they grow is needed for development.
So instead I have chosen to support a company that invests in green energy for Native American people (www.nativeenergy.com). Granted, it feels a lot nicer to contribute to the planting of a beautiful forest than to a windmill park or something like that, but the effect will be almost instantaneous and make development more sustainable (although I think that development will never ever be sustainable if our numbers will remain on this level or grow even further either).
I’d say that both ways of offsetting have positive points and are definitely better than doing nothing, but for now I will stick with the green energy thing.
All the best,
Arthur
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