OK, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and probably will offend a few people. I just got back from a regional meeting. I drove about 9 hours each way - by myself - to get there. It took about 30 gallons of gas for the trip. I feel guilty because I didn't carpool with anyone else, but I didn't know anyone who wanted to travel there with me.
This meeting was at the edge of our region, so many of the attendees chose to take planes to get there. Since we're biologists, I am wondering what kind of an impact our little meeting had. I have to find the "right" carbon calculator to figure this out. How many trees should we be planting to neutralize the emissions we created with our travel to a 2-day affair?
Edit***OK, I checked on one aspect of this. It looks like my husband and I need to plant 36 trees/year just to offset our own emissions. This begs the question - is planting trees enough? We have so many trees in my region that I wonder if this would really be effective at combatting global warming.
Edit 2****Alright, figuring that 50% of the people at the meeting drove and 50% flew, then we would need to plant 500 trees to offset our emissions for the conference. Although I realize that some people carpooled, I also know that I did not factor in electricity in my calculations. Now the question is: how do I convince meeting organizers that we need to do something to neutralize our emissions?
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At one of the conferences I go to, you can pay to offset some of the environmental impact of your travel when you register. The conference is through ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.) The organization they use for this is here.
Thanks jo(e). I would like to make that option available to conference registrants for future meetings that I help to organize. Is this option well received by attendees at your meeting?
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