Offsetting our Company’s CO₂ Emissions

Do you have children? Many of us vast limits employees do, and that makes us even more concerned about humanity’s future on this planet than we would otherwise be. A child born today, in 2018, might well live beyond the year 2100. If that does not ring a bell: 2100 is the year that many climate change projections use as “end date”. 2100 seems to be so far away that a temperature increase of two, three or four degrees cannot really matter – or can it?

Grandchildren

Humans have a problem with scale, and especially with long timescales. 2100 seems to be so far off – yet it might be the year your grandchildren are the age you are today.

What kind of world do you want your grandchildren to live in? Rising temperatures not only cause increased weather extremes, including heatwaves, droughts, floods, and fires. Rising temperatures also affect society, and not in a good way. New areas of conflict will emerge. Water will be precious in more areas. People will be fleeing from their homes, possibly causing a new migration crisis.

Action

Climate change can hopefully still be managed. A lot can – and needs to – be done today.

Airplanes

The best thing, obviously, is to prevent CO₂ from even being released. Looking at personal CO₂ emissions, plane rides often stand out. For example, a trip from Frankfurt to Los Angeles emits approximately 5 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, nearly 5 times as much as the average German household per person per year!

This kind of inefficiency at the expense of our children and grandchildren cannot go on. At vast limits, we are committed to using the most efficient transport available, preferring trains and other types of public transport. But that is not enough.

Offsetting Our Emissions

We take our responsibility versus our children very seriously indeed. Avoiding CO₂ emissions completely, unfortunately, is not possible today, but something else is: removing the emitted CO₂ from the atmosphere. The best way to do that is to plant trees. Trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, releasing oxygen instead. Trees use carbon dioxide to build their trunks and leaves. Used cleverly, trees also provide a sustainable income for local farmers. Reforestation instead of deforestation. How to support that?

As it turns out, there is an organization in Germany that does exactly what we talked about above: planting trees and supporting local farmers to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere: PrimaKlima e.V.

As vast limits, we are supporting PrimaKlima e.V. by not only donating the amount required to offset our company’s activities but also all our employee’s households’ emissions, too. Of course, we cannot not determine all our households’ CO₂ emissions exactly, so we used the 2016 German average and added 50% on top, just to be on the safe side.

Company Forest

PrimaKlima e.V. have many offerings for individuals and organizations, one of them being company forests. Do you think we should do more? Would you like to see a vast limits company forest? Let us know in the comments below.