Three re-posts from Worldchanging caught ClearSky’s eye this week.  While we can’t see our greenhouse gas emissions, artists and writers continue to use their disciplines to reveal the impacts of our energy use.

Photograph: Black River Productions/Mitch Epstein, 2009

Artist Mitch Epstein:  Altamont Pass wind farm, California, 2007.  He also photographed many of the things that the Earth’s most energy-profligate nation does with that power – such as build golf courses in the desert.

Writer Eric De Place:  Equates US CO2 emissions to a BP-size leak every 3 hours.  BP’s Gulf oil spill is about five million barrels of oil total.  Compared to what the United States emits in greenhouse gas emissions, our carbon pollution is so huge that it’s like taking that five million barrels of oil, burning every drop of it, and then doing the same thing again every 2 hours and 41 minutes.

Photograph: Screenshot from Save Power

An advertising campaign used by the New South Wales government:  Utilizes the black balloon image, one black balloon contains 50g of carbon pollution, as part of it’s Save Power advertising campaign.

While ClearSky Climate Solutions found these posts on Worldchanging (see linked photos), Worldchanging found the original posts on We Make Money Not Art, Sightlines Daily Score, and Save Power.

There’s been a great surge of action among businesses who are eager to be responsible corporate citizens by measuring and reducing their carbon footprints.  ClearSky Climate Solutions has helped several businesses be completely carbon neutral, by measuring their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and retiring an equivalent number of certified carbon offsets to balance their carbon output.

Many businesses are going carbon neutral - but is it necessary?

Recently, a client of ours posed an interesting question: “Is it absolutely necessary to follow the fad and become a carbon-neutral business?”  The motivation behind this question wasn’t that they’re skeptical about climate change, or that they don’t feel a responsibility to reduce their company’s carbon footprint.  Rather, they were wondering if there is a level of GHG pollution that’s actually sustainable, given the fact that our earth’s natural processes are able to store a large quantity of CO2 every year.

This is an excellent question!  For example, the world’s oceans absorb ~2 Gt carbon/year.  We also know that forests have a huge potential to absorb carbon, but actually this sink is now a source of atmospheric carbon due to deforestation and land-use changes.  Fossil fuel burning contributes ~6 Gt carbon/year to the atmosphere.  Theoretically, then, we only need to reduce our global GHG emissions by 67% in order to achieve a sustainable level of CO2 emissions that the oceans could absorb, assuming that we can halt the problem of deforestation. If this is the case, then a business could reduce or offset 67% of their carbon footprint and claim to be atmospherically sustainable – right?

The issue with this approach is that the earth is already way over-budget in atmospheric carbon.   Global CO2 concentrations are currently 389 ppm, and scientific consensus says we need to reduce to 350 ppm in order to avoid significant temperature rise.  Also, the excess carbon that we’ve been emitting for the past 100 years has a very long residence time in the atmosphere, meaning that it’s not going to be absorbed very quickly.  Finally, those of us in the USA and Europe are responsible for the vast majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere, even if China has recently surpassed our rate of pollution.  Therefore, we don’t have the luxury of choosing a sustainable level of CO2 emissions – it’s our responsibility to reduce our carbon emissions as much as possible, as quickly as possible.  After reducing, offsetting the remaining carbon footprint and becoming  carbon neutral is one of the best ways for businesses to take full responsibility for their climate impacts.