I have a guilty secret to share. It has been over a year since I've offset the carbon from my air travel. Work takes me all over the country, though less frequently in the past year, and as you now know air travel also injects more CO2 per trip into the air than your typical drive into the country. There were several reasons for this lapse. Like most folks my pocketbook wears a lean and mean look after its sixth month on a fiscal diet. I'd hoped to convince management they should front the cost to do their part, but am reserving the sustainability self-righteousness for green product development. Lastly I'm still pissed off about iron dumping. You may have heard of this; to help offset carbon emissions some companies, in addition to planting forests, have taken to seeding oceans with ferrous oxides to stimulate phytoplankton growth. Yes, phytoplankton; the first step in that enormous aquatic food ladder that puts something resembling “Chilean Sea Bass” on your plate at Oceanique on Main St. Contrary to what you might think I LOVED this idea, and invested in it for offsets until bad press shut down the company.

So I've been skimping on the offsets, and feeling guilty about it. This weekend I finagled a Thursday to Monday business trip to Fort Lauderdale. Between calls I tried lounging on the beach, trying my best to enjoy the “unusually” cool weather, and plugging away at Tom Freidmans “Hot Flat and Crowded;” Northwestern's book of the year. I knew the general contours of his argument – we've got to change, fast, to survive and thrive in a changed world. But the facts and his ability to master them – the irreversible loss of biodiversity, the climatic chaos, political instability and petroleum based autocracies encrusting the globe like cancer – made me feel profoundly the loss we've inherited from our parents, and pass on to our children. Occasionally I put down the book to comb the soft sand. Interspersed with the shells and brown seaweed I found rounded pieces of plastic in faded hues of brown, blue and white; had to collect more than one tattered cigarette filter from the mix. Walking, holding these objects in one hand, the Friedman in another, I wondered how I could explain the difference between them to my daughter; wondered if her children would think seashells naturally came in hues of brown, blue and faded white polystyrene.

They say there's an island the size of Manhattan floating midway between Honolulu and Tokyo made entirely of plastic, and I believe them. Perhaps my grandchildren will consider it the eighth wonder of the world, or just a convenient land bridge to replace the flights they can no longer afford to take. I don't know, but in the meantime I'll find some spare cash, I'll take responsibility for what I've done. And while I like the idea of growing phytoplankton, the idea of investing in better insulation for low-income homes in Evanston, or feasibility studies for an offshore wind farm intrigues me even more. So I hope this year as you travel you too will consider something for the Evanston Climate Action Fund; to offset our carbon, and invest in our community – our children's only sustainable future.

To learn more about offsetting air travel using the Climate Action Fund, read this greenairtravel wmasthead.pdf by Evanston resident Eleanor Revelle, first published in the Evanston RoundTable.