I just finished offsetting 20,000 miles of airplane carbon emissions. I also just started. Because the whole thing took about five minutes.
I decided to offset, to counter the emissions from mine and my wife, Chana’s recent visit to my family in New York. We chose to buy carbon credits from the Heschel Center’s Good Energy Initiative, and their “Children’s Power Project,” which circulates solar-powered medical equipment to children in need.
The process went like this:
I went to www.goodenergy.org.il, and clicked on “Offset with Us!” I then chose “Flights”, entered airport codes into the site’s carbon calculator, and was told that Chana and I had 12.03 tons of CO2 to offset. We then searched through a handful of potential offsetting projects, chose Children’s Power, went to “Check Out,” and paid. Our offset charge was 120 dollars.
There are hundreds, probably thousands of offsetting projects out there. But we wanted to offset with Good Energy because their projects are about providing simply Good Energy to Israel and that’s all. No far-fetching, fund-munching projects projected to be effective in the year 2020; rather, pragmatic ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, aid in Israel’s energy independence and help Israeli communities suffering socio-economic difficulty.
And so that was it. Five minutes, 120 dollars, offset CO2 and a clear conscience.
Or not. We certainly have no regrets about flying to visit family once a year- but our conscience is far from clear. No matter how many good energy initiatives we join, our carbon emissions are”out there,” warming the earth, changing the climate.
To Chan and me, carbon offsetting is not about becoming “Carbon Neutral”- but being carbon honest. Or carbon accountable. Honest that even good actions have bad consequences, and accountable in trying to pay for them. In that sense, buying carbon credits is less of an “Offsetting,” and more of a tax that supports a less carbon reliant future.
My wish and blessing to us and other offsetters out there, is that we use carbon offsets not to absolve ourselves from responsibility for our carbon emissions, but as a measure to increase our carbon consciousness: reminding us to be more carbon efficient in daily life, encouraging us to keep track of how much we are actually emitting, and reassuring us that when important things like visiting family abroad come up- there is an easy, five-minute activity that will at the very least, do something to help.
Today more and more synagogues, JCC’s, families and individuals are going green. Carbon offsetting is a way of counteracting some of our carbon footprint; it can also be incredibly confusing. How does it work? Is it ethical? Is it Jewish? How can I know if an offsetting program is really helping save the world or whether it’s a scam?
At Jewish Climate Initiative (JCI), we created the following guide to answer all these questions and more, and also to provide information about the main offsetting projects based in Israel. It can also be a small, seasonal step toward teshuvah, positive transformation in the way that we use energy. We hope our offsetting guide will be a useful resource for you and your community and would love to hear your feedback. And feel free to forward it onwards to family and friends!
(If you’re having trouble opening the page, right-click on the above link and choose “Open in a new window.” If you’re still unable to open the page, either download the latest version of Adobe Reader or contact us and we’ll send you a copy.)
With best wishes for a Shanah tovah u’metukah, a good, sweet year,
What does this amusing video clip have to do with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year? Read on…
Teshuvah, the innate ability we have to change our lives for the better is one of Judaism’s most central beliefs. We are not slaves to our pasts but can shake ourselves free of old, bad habits and remake our lives as we, in our best moments, and God, all the time, would really like them to be. Rosh Hashanah is the time of the year when we look at our lives from the perspective of those moments.
It takes a mental and moral leap for most of us to see our carbon footprints, the personal contribution that we make to global climate change, as something that calls for Teshuvah. Yelling at the kids, ignoring your spouse, kicking beggars in the street; these are all things that we can clearly recognize as wrong. We understand that they require reflection, regret and a determined effort to change. But everyday behaviour…? Driving, flying, buying food shipped from around the world…that’s just normal Western living. Can these actions fall within the purview of such an exalted ethical concept?
Yes, they can. There is an egregious and outrageous moral wrong about the way that carbon-hungry lifestyle’s in rich countries are already contributing to drought, hunger and extreme weather conditions in the world’s poorest nations. We just don’t see the silent, odorless web of interconnectedness that links cause and effect.
It is this fact of interconnectedness that can make the challenge of climate change feel so overwhelming and disorienting. The demonstrable phenomena that a coal-fired power station in Michigan can contribute to starvation in Mali, or that the car I choose to buy in Boston may be somehow implicated in floods in Bangladesh (or, for that matter, tornados in Texas,) fundamentally challenge our views of how moral agency and responsibility work.
We intuitively understand the solid-bodies physics of how an SUV, if driven without care, can flatten pedestrians. Knowing this, we are generally careful to make sure not to do so. The atmospheric physics of how careless driving of a different kind can contribute to flattening somebody’s mud hut in the Maldives is beyond most of our scientific ken and so outside our frames of conceptual and moral reference. After all, very few people would knowingly and deliberately drive their SUV into a mud hut. And if we did so by accident, most of us would certainly say sorry, and offer to pay.
In Judaism, individual responsibility is the fundamental unit of social change. Teshuvah starts with me and you, (as my friend Jess Gold in England points out.) “Great is Teshuvah, because through a single person repenting, the whole world may be forgiven,” says the Talmud (Yoma 86b). This is the redemptive flip side of interconnectedness; the deep, sincere transformation of one person can change everything.
The most common reason for individual inaction on climate change is that the problem is too huge; it will take governments, laws and lots of money to solve. This argument doesn’t wash in Judaism. Certainly; the problem will require governments, laws and lots of money. But governments are our agents, not our alibis. They won’t make far-reaching policy changes that will require us to alter our lifestyles until they see that we are ready to change and are not going to throw them out of power for requiring us to do so. As the Rambam says: “A person should always see himself and the whole world as equally balanced between merit and guilt…; if he does a single mitzva he can tip himself and everyone over to the side of merit and save the world.” (Hilkhot Teshuvah 2:4)
In this connection we at JCI have been working on a carbon-offsetting guide. (Should be out right after Rosh Hashanah.) As you may know, here’s how offsetting works:
First, calculate the quantity of carbon you emit by flying, driving or using electricity. Second, pay for a
project that reduces carbon emissions by this same amount. These might include generating electricity from solar, wind and hydroelectric sources instead of fossil fuels, or reducing fuel use by increasing efficiency. Since greenhouse gases circulate freely in the atmosphere, this project can be located anywhere in the world.
There is a fundamental critique made against offsetting; that it is simply unethical. Critics argue that we need to radically reduce our carbon emissions; offsetting your flight to Australia will, at best, neutralize the extra carbon you spewed into the atmosphere whereas what is required is to produce less of the stuff. Some have compared offsets to a child shifting her spinach to the other side of the plate and pretending that consequently there is less of it.
Underlying this is the idea that if some act or behavior is wrong, paying to do it won’t make it right. The spoof website http://www.cheatneutral.com (see video above) makes this point in a funny but sharp way. You can’t offset marital infidelity by paying someone to be faithful on your behalf. So too, if living a high carbon life-style is immoral then buying offsets doesn’t make it OK.
This critique can be supported by Jewish sources. Somebody who physically damages another person is required to pay five categories of damages; damage, pain, loss of earnings, medical expenses, and embarrassment. (Bava Kamma 83b) Does this mean that if you beat someone up and then pay all the expenses that the court asks of you you’ve made everything alright? No. Beating people up is wrong. You’re not allowed to do it even if you fully intend to pay damages afterwards. Money alone cannot make it right. (Bava Kamma 91b, Maimomides, Hilkhot Hovel u’mazik, 5:1).
Nevertheless, Jewish Climate Initiative is in favor of offsetting. (We’re producing a handy guide, to come out next week.) Here’s why.
1. It’s much, much better than doing nothing. As long as we continue to fly, drive big cars, etc. offsetting mitigates some of the effects.
2. The kind of people who offset are usually the kind of people who are also trying to shrink their carbon footprints. They are offsetting in addition to reducing emissions, not instead of it.
3. It gives a boost to ecologically friendly projects, communities and technologies, which has positive knock-on effects.
4. Offsetting through the projects in our guide supports green initiatives in Israel.
5. Judaism recognizes that change takes time. The process of transforming one’s life, Teshuvah does not happen all at once, but one step at a time (People who do become deeply observant overnight often revert to their former life-style just as quickly.)
The world is entering a process of Teshuvah, positive and profound, transformation, in the way we all use energy; it needs to happen pretty darn fast, say within a decade or two, but still it will take time. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, in his work “Orot Hateshuvah advised Baalei Teshuvah, to acknowledge the things they don’t yet have the power to fix in their lives, and pray for the ability to repair them in the future. Offsetting is one way to repair a little of the damage we still do to the earth and its most vulnerable citizens in our everyday use of fossil fuels, even as we all work towards a new energy culture that is in harmony and not at odds with the planet.
Climate of Change and JCI wish you and yours a happy, healthy and blessed New Year.
I'm Julian, Co-Founder of Jewish Climate Initiative. We invite you to join us as we draw on Jewish sources and spirituality for wisdom to help shape changes in behavior, policy and consciousness in response to the challenge of global climate change.
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, aid in Israel’s energy independence and help Israeli communities suffering socio-economic difficulty.
Driving, flying, buying food shipped from around the world…that’s just normal Western living. Can these actions fall within the purview of such an exalted ethical concept?
and disorienting. The demonstrable phenomena that a coal-fired power station in Michigan can contribute to starvation in Mali, or that the car I choose to buy in Boston may be somehow implicated in floods in Bangladesh (or, for that matter, tornados in Texas,) fundamentally challenge our views of how moral agency and responsibility work.
outside our frames of conceptual and moral reference. After all, very few people would knowingly and deliberately drive their SUV into a mud hut. And if we did so by accident, most of us would certainly say sorry, and offer to pay.
. It gives a boost to ecologically friendly projects, communities and technologies, which has positive knock-on effects.
I'm Julian, Co-Founder of 
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