The Rising Value of the Global Carbon Market

Thu, 15 May 2008 17:07:51 GMT

Recently only a pipe dream, the carbon market has exploded in recent years. With "cap and trade" schemes available in the EU and more recently British Columbia - Canada's most western province - plans are set to follow suit in Australia, New Zealand and the rest of Canada. Even the typically sluggish United States seems poised to adopt some form of emissions trading scheme, with all three presidential candidates stating their support for some permutation of a carbon trading initiative. Whatever the time frame, it seems near inevitable that companies will face increasingly binding laws to account for the amount of carbon dioxide (and equivalent gases) they release into the atmosphere. And with the emergence of this trend, a new speculative market has evolved, offering an increasingly attractive area for earning a profit. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Offers Earth Day Carbon Calculator

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:39:53 GMT

Zerofootprint's Earth Day Carbon Calculator offers a means to honour the day by measuring your personal impact on the earth. Check it out here:... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint and Unilever Launch Water Calculator

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:40:12 GMT

Unilever has teamed up with Zerofootprint to develop the One Minute Water Calculator. This customized piece of software asks simple questions in order to calculate the amount of water individual lifestyles require. With water availability looming as a potential world crisis, this calculator arrives at an important time so as to offer individuals the opportunity to not only monitor, but also reduce their water consumption. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint and Earth Hour have teamed up!

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Earth Hour has teamed up with Zerofootprint to provide two carbon calculators that enable Earth Hour participants to measure their carbon footprint. Measure yours at http://earthhour.zerofootprint.net/. Or try the Facebook version that will allow you mobilize and challenge your friends. You can also support Earth Hour by logging on to Zerofootprint Toronto and joining the Earth Hour group.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Toronto goes live!

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:07:08 GMT

The City of Toronto and Zerofooprint have officially unveiled a new community-based weapon in the ongoing battle against climate change. "It is up to all of us to do our part to minimize the impact of our day-to-day activities," Mayor David Miller said yesterday at the launch. "Each of us can make a difference as we work together to make Toronto the greenest, most livable city in North America."... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Interactive Window Helps Green Roots and Fight Climate Change

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:50:07 GMT

Roots, a leading Canadian lifestyle brand, has launched an interactive window display to help you shrink your carbon footprint. Through the display, you'll also be able to help Roots reduce their environmental impact. Plus, the technology will allow you to shop regardless of store hours ... literally 24/7!... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 5 - So, you think you don't offset?

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:39:27 GMT

Every Thursday night, like every other householder in our neighborhood, I collect our waste paper, cans, bottles and plastic and put them out on the street outside our house. On Friday morning a local municipal truck comes by and collects it for recycling. I pay for this service through my taxes. Apart from some gripes about the efficiency of the service, few local people complain about it. And only a few extremists who tend to oppose government action in all its forms object to the recycling on principle. In essence, recycling is a form of offsetting. I am paying someone else to deal with waste products of my lifestyle. Apart from my own conscience and the small chore of actually collecting together the paper, bottles, etc., and putting them on the street, there is little incentive or pressure on me not to accumulate the waste. Sure, there is plenty of encouragement to recycle, but no one harangues me for not cutting down on the newspapers I read, or suggests I should avoid buying my cat food in cans, or demands I should buy beer by the barrel to avoid so many glass bottles. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 4 - Why Offset With Trees When Fossil Fuels Are To Blame?

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:42:28 GMT

If climate change is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels isn't offsetting with trees simply a distraction? Shouldn't we focus on renewable energy projects that can replace the use of fossil fuel? It's true that burning fossil fuels accounts for the largest proportion of carbon emissions. Nevertheless, the loss of trees plays a significant role. The conversion of forests has contributed around 30% of the total carbon build up in the atmosphere since 1850. And it continues - deforestation still accounts for over 20% of emissions a year. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 3 - The Problem Of Permanence

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:58:26 GMT

Something that worries many people about offsetting emissions with trees is how can you guarantee that they will last long enough? Trees take time to absorb carbon, extracting it slowly from the atmosphere as they grow. But saplings are vulnerable to bad weather, neglect and damage by animals. Older woodlands and forests face the risk of fire, pests and disease, which could release the carbon back into the atmosphere. And how can we be sure even if a forest is protected now, it won't be logged or cleared at some point in the future? ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Join the online Zerofootprint Party During Live Earth

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:14:51 GMT

Zerofootprint is inviting you to participate in something extraordinary. Tomorrow, join a group of world citizens and pledge to reduce your Environmental Footprint by 10%, in 1 year, at Zerofootprint's online event during Live Earth. This party is happening at www.zerofootprint.net on 7/7/07 and is the kick-off to a global campaign, using the power of the Web, to engage citizens of the world around reducing their footprint. Let us show the world that together we can have as much positive impact on the planet as one large country.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting, Part 2 - The Additionality Issue In Offsetting

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:07:29 GMT

One of the biggest problems with offsetting is ensuring 'additionality' - proving that the offsets that you are buying in order to counterbalance your carbon emissions would not have happened without yours and other similar contributions. Often the projects sound intrinsically worthwhile - protecting threatened original forest, supporting conversion to renewable energy, installing low energy light bulbs, etc. - and sometimes it is hard not to have a sneaking suspicion that they would have been done irrespective of the offset schemes. And if that is the case, someone is profiting from your good intentions, and it isn't Mother Earth.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting - Offsetting As A Sop To The Conscience

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:49:07 GMT

Carbon offsetting provokes a powerful emotional response in some people. They just don't like the idea that you can pay someone else to mop up your carbon emissions. It smacks of indulgence and cheating. Critics say buying an offset while continuing to fly, or drive an SUV, or live in a mansion with all the lights on, is at best hypocritical, and at worst, downright dangerous. It simply avoids the issue, which is that we should be reducing our carbon footprint, and simply encourages the delusion that we can go on living in an environmentally profligate way. Some even compare offsetting with the Papal indulgences of the late Middle Ages, where Catholics were offered redemptions for their sins in return for donations to the Church - buying their way out of punishment for wrongdoing. Critics say this is exactly what modern-day carbon offsetters are trying to do. They think money will buy them a clear conscience while they continue to fill the sky with fumes. Certain high profile stories, mainly about celebrities trying to offset carbon-intensive lifestyles, give credence to the criticisms, but it is far from the whole picture. Offsetting is something that is practiced by thousands of individuals and organizations who are neither hypocritical or delusional. Let's look at the argument more closely.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Inspired for change

Thu, 10 May 2007 11:33:40 GMT

This week, Ron Dembo's daughter, Justine, is writing in his place. Justine is a medical student at the University of Toronto. On May 3, 2007 I attended an inspirational forum lead by Australian activist and "Deep Ecologist" John Seed. It was hosted by the Sustainability Network, which is a Toronto company that works to enrich nonprofit environmental agencies by providing management assistance and training. The focus of this forum, which was part of Mr. Seed's five-month international tour, was on "despair and empowerment" in the current climate change movement; the intent was to inspire individual and political action toward supporting the movement. I came out of the forum feeling more inspired than I have in months, and so I wanted to share some of this inspiration with members of Zerofootprint. In the beginning, Mr. Seed discussed some interesting facts: Australia is the world's most prominent exporter of coal, and this coal then contributes to over 1% of today's greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, Australia is a major producer of methane gas, through its farming of ruminant animals. And yet, according to Mr. Seed, Australians are working to reduce their impact on the environment through legislating power usage, air pollution, and everything else except for these above two issues. This is ironic, given the dire situation in which Australians are finding themselves - including severe droughts and impending fresh water shortages - as a result of global warming. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Not with a buzz but a whimper

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:53:21 GMT

The most familiar plea made by environmentalists warning us of the immanent disappearance of this or that species is a question: how will we explain the absence of the polar bear, or the manatee, or a certain species of eagle, to our children? It is certainly a haunting prospect, imagining a world without a host of creatures, and describing things that are familiar to us in terms that will seem to children as fantastic as the creatures of their imaginations, or as strange and wonderful as the species that our ancestors hunted to extinction long ago. It's an effective argument, because when we imagine the absent animals and the wide-eyed kids, we also imagine ourselves as sad and remorseful.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Getting Real

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:23:44 GMT

Imagine discovering a Roman newspaper from, say, 23 August 410 AD. On that day, the Goths had the city under siege. They had already demanded, and had been given, five thousand pounds of gold, thirty thousand pounds of silver, four thousand silken tunics, three thousand scarlet-dyed hides, and three thousand pounds of pepper. Statues were melted down to pay off the barbarians, but the Goths wanted more. In short, it was a difficult spot for the Romans. The very existence of the city, and certainly their way of life, was at stake. So you'd expect their newspapers to betray a bit of uneasiness. That is, you might be surprised to find sections of the paper devoted to winners of the chariot races, or recipes for larks' tongues, speculation on the next season's most promising colors. The Goths sacked the city the next day, bringing to an end a seemingly invincible civilization.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Green Suggestions for Coffee Shops

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:03:22 GMT

This week, Ron Dembo's daughter, Justine, is writing in his place. Justine is a medical student at the University of Toronto. I recently realized that the coffee companies of Toronto (and, no doubt, of the Western hemisphere) waste a tremendous amount. I noticed that my fellow medical students buy at least two coffees per day from the hospital Tim Hortons, and each time, they use a new cup, new lid, new straw, and so on. Plus, wherever I see a coffee shop in a mall, there's no recycling bin to be seen anywhere nearby - and I doubt many people carry the used cup around until they find a bin. Imagine the waste that could be prevented if people were to use refillable mugs....and better yet, if the coffee companies were to encourage that. And wouldn't it be wonderful if the coffee cups could be recycled? Wonderful, but hardly a fantasy. Surely we're at a stage in our civilization where recycling is not a great deal to ask for from people and companies claiming to be even the least bit green. The materials involved in the coffee business are actually recyclable in some places but, regrettably, not Toronto. Fifteen billion cups of coffee are consumed each year in Canada. That's 45 million cups a day. Leaving aside for a moment questions of procurement and fair trade, and questions of greenhouse gas emissions associated with food miles, there has to be a real opportunity here to make a difference just by giving a damn.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Getting It Right Before It's Too Late

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:32:35 GMT

No one can have failed to notice the shift in public perception of climate change in the past few months: the scientific debate, dangerously prolonged, is truly over. But this is not in itself a victory for those who are struggling to avert planetary disaster (as I'm sure most readers are well aware). Before there is anything to celebrate, we'll have to take that momentum and turn it into action. Right now, action is often something we talk about in very general terms. We want to "do the right thing," or "take our responsibility seriously," or "go green." But what all this means is not always clear. I don't mean to unfairly accuse anyone of greenwashing. But I think it is safe to say we're not all pulling at the same oars, both as businesses and as individuals. And that's probably natural. Consensus is just emerging now. That makes this a threshold in human history. This may sound like Hollywood melodrama, but the inescapable fact is that the decisions we make right now will have a disproportionate effect on future generations. In other words, it is a time when leadership will bear immense rewards. For this reason, I was very proud to take part last week in a conference that brought together some real leaders. Some were household names. Federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion, Toronto Mayor David Miller, former Prime Minister Joe Clark all spoke passionately about leadership and the environment. I took the stage immediately after it was vacated by a man named Al Gore. (I have to say, speaking after Mr. Gore teaches humility.)... Read the full story on TreeHugger

SUVs as Cliche

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:17:19 GMT

In my last entry I took a page from the Weather Makers, and cited Tim Flannery's observation that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliche even before it has been understood. My example of a cliche was the Kyoto protocol, which people talk about without really paying attention to. Kyoto is largely just a symbol of our feelings about global warming, rather than an indication that we're doing anything about them.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Kyoto as Cliche

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:34:19 GMT

Tim Flannery nailed it when he reflected that one of the obstacles to decisive action on climate change is that the whole idea of global warming has become a cliche even before it has been understood. There are many ways to interpret this, as global warming means different things to different people. To some it's a looming catastrophe, to others it's a business opportunity, to many of us it's something to worry about once we've taken care of other things. (To still others it's a communist hoax, but let's focus on people who are trying to do something helpful.) What this means is that even though we all agree that we have to do something, it is far from clear what something is.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Tax season is coming up-invest in a few compact fluorescent light bulbs

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:02:00 GMT

Australia made news around the world this week by announcing an imminent ban on a cherished piece of Victorian technology: the incandescent light bulb. Now other governments, including California's and Ontario's, are considering a similar initiative. And in Ontario, at least, the opposition isn't trying to halt the plan-John Tory is castigating the Liberals for taking their time. And what's not to like about compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)? In Australia, they expect the ban to result in a cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 4 million tonnes. In Ontario, it looks as though a move away from incandescent bulbs would cut electricity demand by the equivalent of the generating capacity of one coal-fired plant. However, there will always be objectors (this is axiomatic-if there are still, somehow, people out there with doubts that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming, we shouldn't be surprised that compact fluorescent light bulbs have their detractors). What is heartening here is that the objections are so easily dealt with.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Carbon Machines

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:03:11 GMT

Though he did not drop into the press conference by parachute, airline mogul and consummate showman Richard Branson made an impression last week when he offered a $25 million prize to an inventor canny enough to devise a machine capable of stripping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It's easy to see why we'd want such a device-CO2 is the chief greenhouse gas, and we show little sign that we're about to stop dumping it into the skies. Worldwide, we emit 24 billion tonnes of the gas each year, and though a few countries, like Britain and Germany, have managed to slow down emissions, the planet's foremost polluters, China and the US, to say nothing of the vast bulk of the developed nations, continue to pour more and more CO2 into the atmosphere every year. The Kyoto process has shown how difficult it is going to be to reach a political consensus internationally, as nearly everyone uses someone else as an excuse to keep polluting. And even if we did manage to reach an international agreement tomorrow, and if we also miraculously managed to enforce it, and cut emissions altogether, the planet would continue to heat up. "There will be CO2 left in the atmosphere, continuing to influence the climate, more than 1000 years after humans stop emitting it," says Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Making Some Green

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 10:07:29 GMT

Surely there is not a serious investor or executive out there who hasn't considered putting some money into the green revolution in the expectation of getting even more out. Retailers see an opportunity to widen margins and do some effective marketing. Political pressure and the dawning awareness of energy scarcity are making renewable energy look like at worst a great hedge against the caprices of energy markets, and at best the next revolution. And big players see a huge opportunity to make a splash in a cap-and-trade carbon market, and are teaming up with environmentalists to lobby governments to bring one about--an alliance no one would have anticipated only a short time ago. Even a corporation like Wal-Mart, once the punching bag for protesters of every stripe, is flexing its considerable buying power to force its customers to use compact fluorescent light bulbs.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Interview: Thomas Homer-Dixon on Resilience and Sustainability: Part I

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:06:56 GMT

Below is a conversation between Thomas Homer-Dixon and Ron Dembo. Dr. Dembo is a risk expert and founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit dedicated to reducing our ecological footprint. Dr. Homer-Dixon is Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also the author of The Ingenuity Gap, winner of the Governor-General's Award. His most recent book, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization assesses the concatenated risks facing the planet's civilizations, and urges not a solution to this or that problem, but a whole new way of understanding the systems we've built. The challenges are not political or economic (or not fundamentally so); they are structural. And the only way to address them before it's too late, he urges, is to understand that the repertoire of solutions we usually turn to is not going to work. The main theme of the conversation is the idea of "resilience." Homer-Dixon argues powerfully that our rush towards greater efficiency has made our civilization brittle and vulnerable. The model strategy for increasing resilience is to increase redundancy and reduce unnecessary complexity -- to maintain "slack" in the system. Dembo puts this in terms of risk management: failure to maintain slack means betting everything on a single forecast. To manage risk means being prepared for scenarios we know are not going to happen (since not every scenario will come to pass, our preparations for it will prove to be redundant). We do this all the time when we take out insurance: we're prepared for our house burning down and for our house not burning down.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: Black is the new green: Sources for computer power consumption

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:04:07 GMT

We've got a heap of responses to "Black is the New Green," and they tend to fall into three themes. The first is to commend the idea of making computers more energy efficient through power-saving software. The second is to suggest that much of what we suggest is already possible for anyone who takes the time to configure their machine; in other words, the goal should be education, rather than software development. The third is to express incredulity at our numbers. There's not much point responding to the first set of responses, except to say thanks. We appreciate it.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: Black is the new green

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 06:13:07 GMT

Let's think for a moment about something we never notice - our screen savers. Around the world, right now, complex geometric shapes and patterns are bouncing around screens in empty offices and quiet suburban basements. Even when you're gone for lunch, your screen saver labors on. If electricity were free, this wouldn't be worth thinking about. But then again, if electricity were free, the world would look very different. Very different. The fact is, we are scrambling to find new sources of power and new efficiencies. We're spending billions to do it. And at the same time, we're using computers that quietly drain the grid.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: The Ins and Outs of Carbon Trading

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 06:25:53 GMT

The UK is looking at a personal carbon trading scheme that will give everyone a free equal allowance of carbon units, which can be exchanged for carbon use, say for petrol or electricity, or traded in a market that aims to drive carbon use down. With carbon trading by governments and corporations proving successful, there could one day be schemes for individuals too. The idea is that citizens are allocated a number of carbon units for the purchase of energy and fuel, but which can also be traded on an open market. All citizens receive an equal allocation at the outset, and those that use less can sell their excess to those that want more. All this takes place in a framework where the total number of units is capped, with the aim of driving overall consumption downwards. The idea of tradable personal carbon allowances, or domestic tradable quotas as they are also called, is not new. The concept was first proposed in the mid 1990s, when it was largely ignored as Utopian and unworkable. But it is now being taken seriously by the British Government among others. In a recent speech, the UK's environment secretary David Miliband said such a scheme would tackle the "vast majority of individual [carbon] emissions ... which in turn make up 44% of the [UK] economy's total emissions".... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: Designing away the problems of offsetting

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:10:11 GMT

It is impossible to write anything about offsetting these days without prompting a flurry of responses that point out its problems and pitfalls. Travel offsetting just encourages people to fly more, critics complain. Or energy emissions offsetting does nothing to discourage energy waste, while offsetting book production undermines paper recycling, and so on. Many of the criticisms are valid, but that doesn't mean we can simply abandon offsetting. If we did, the underlying problems wouldn't simply disappear. And some of the alternative solutions that are proposed are even more idealistic and unworkable - everybody should stop flying, for example. Given the scale of the problem that we face with climate change, and the urgency of the task to tackle it, we can't afford to ignore and what it has to offer.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: To Offset or Not Offset, That is the Question

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:30:51 GMT

A UK travel company has accepted that it is not just its customers that are responsible for the emissions produced by their flights, and it now plants a tree for every booking it takes. Flourishing UK holiday company TravelRepublic has gone one better than simply offering its customers the opportunity to offset the carbon of their air travel - the company has pledged to save a tree for every customer that books one of their flights. Working with international conservation charity World Land Trust (WLT), TravelRepublic is making a donation towards the protection of threatened rainforests for each customer.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: "Al Gore, you had better get rid of your lawnmower"

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 06:11:01 GMT

What has Al Gore got to do with lawnmowers? A lot. I recently discovered, to my horror, that a typical gas powered lawnmower produces as much pollution in 7 hours of operation as a modern car does in a 100,000 miles of driving! Another way of looking at this is that the two-stroke gasoline lawnmower that is ubiquitous in the suburbs of North America, pollutes (PM, NOx, etc) as much in one hour as 40 late model cars running for the same amount of time! Why? Because the off-road engines found on lawnmowers, leaf blowers, tillers, as well as snow blowers, snowmobiles and dirt bikes don't have to have catalytic converters. These handy devices reduce gasoline emissions by about 90%, and are mandatory on cars and trucks.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Zerofootprint: What is offsetting?

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 07:44:48 GMT

Imagine for a moment that you are a farmer in rural India. Your life is simple but hard. You grow food for your family, with perhaps a little land set aside for a cash crop such as cotton or tea. To cook, you use wood from dwindling supplies in the nearby forest, or kerosene, for which you must pay with money that you would prefer to spend on medicines or your children's education. And both wood and kerosene produce fumes, causing respiratory problems for your family. However, you own a few cattle, and if you had a biogas plant, or there was a village facility, you could turn the dung from your cattle into fuel for cooking as well as lighting. At a stroke, you would improve your family's finances and health, and raise your standard of living. The problem is that you don't have the funds to buy the biogas plant.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

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