Ideal Bite

i have read studies that prove that hummers are better for the environment and costs over the life of the car compared to some hybrid cars, because of maintence and batteries. check it out

I drive by a construction site on my way to work every day and see at leat 3 police cars, running, flashing their lights, wasting gas/ideling for hours on end. Aren't we in a oil/gas crisis? I guess it's "time and tide". Also a couple years ago I was in Vegas and watched advertising trucks drive up and down the street...all day long.

It is unheartening, but I can understand a police car idling... the police are there to protect us and may need to go in a hurry... but to idle for hours, that IS ridiculous! Why should they care though? Don't we pay for the gas in their vehicles? Maybe if a small percentage of their wages went to gas consumption, they would think twice! I have no problem with carbon off-setting. I am a "greenie" with a gas guzzler. I have no money to get a new car, but I have the choice to make my runs as little as possible... I live about 10 miles away from anything and 20 miles away from anything decent. Every other aspect of my life is getting as green as possible! We are also going to be planting trees! I am so excited!

I need to begin by saying I am a huge tree hugger (literally... hugging a tree can be very grounding in this topsy-turvy world ;-)), but I heard a while back that once a tree dies or is cut down, the CO2 that it has absorbed over its lifetime is released back into the atmosphere. Does anyone know if this is true? If it is, then the only way to cut gas emissions is to cut it at the source. Otherwise we're just putting a band-aid on a bullet hole.

Its not cow farts that produce the methane: it's their belches, but that isn't as funny sounding. And, they are working on a better food source to mitigate this.

PZ: Yes, the carbon sequestered by trees gets released after their death (as CO2 if the dead wood is burned, or as methane--a much more potent greenhouse gas--if it's eaten by termites), but keep in mind that trees can live for hundreds of years. So this is a little more than a band-aid we're talking about. Reforesting an area that was previously clear-cut creates a major carbon sink that will absorb CO2 for a long time; sustainable harvesting of trees, with new, growing trees planted to replace those that have been turned into lumber, can have a net negative greenhouse effect, because the new trees will start to absorb CO2 right away, while the cut ones will not start releasing it until the products made from their wood begin to rot. Deforestation is a major contributor to global warming, and slowing or reversing it can be a major part of the solution.

If you are using the offsets to justify some unnecessary luxury, then it seems hypocritical to me, but if you're doing it to balance out some of the everyday carbon footprint we all leave, and trying to be "green" at the same time, then I think it's a positive thing.

The so called "studies" mentioned by Matt (in the first comment) regarding hybrid cars has been discredited by a number of reliable sources. For example, David Friedman, the research director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Clean Vehicles program, said: "This study (regarding the Prius) has been completely contradicted by studies from MIT, Argonne National Laboratory, and Carnegie Mmile figure, which would've jacked up the Hummer's lifetime energy use for fuel alone to a value of around $37,000.)" So YES, CHECK it out!!

The whole idea of offsetting vacations is odious to me. You can't undo wasteful, environmentally-uncool behavior by buying an offset. People need to work on reducing their impact in a truly meaningful way, not just excusing it by buying more. You will never convince me that taking a trip and offsetting it is better than not taking it at all. Yes, making good choices for the planet and our future hurts sometimes, but pretending that these choices can be avoided does no one any service. I know Ideal Bite is geared toward "light green" folks, but I think that in a tip like this, there should at LEAST be a mention of reducing trips, not just "offsetting" them. If comparatively rich Americans keep gallivanting all over the globe as they please, we are all screwed, and I find it irritating that the Bite chooses to suggest differently. Yes, be suggest-y, but for goodness' sake, BE RESPONSIBLE, too.

TREES: There is an area of "carbon offset" trees planted near my house. After planting, these trees are unattended and left to die. No one cares for them. All that is left in these fields are the plastic tubes the trees were planted in. But I bet someone feels pretty special about buying the carbon offset that funded that plastic forest. I have seen other fields like this one. This practice seems to actually harm the environment it was meant to help. METHANE: If the same cows that release excess methane into the atmosphere were fed a diet of things they can actually digest (like grass, hay etc. and not corn and byproducts) they would not be so gassy. By feeding cows corn etc. to make the cows grow fatter and faster they are causing indigestion in the cow's stomachs and rumen therefore causing excess methane gas. We humans can mess up anything!