<h2>Personal Travel:</h2>
<p>A carbon offset is basically a way of paying someone else for the carbon you continue to generate. If you have taken all the steps you can to lower your personal (not business-related) carbon footprint, and still you want to do more, you may want to consider carbon offsets. Many people who must travel a lot by air, for instance, buy carbon offsets.</p>
<p><br />
Offsets are tricky; there are as many methods of offsetting as there are offsetters, and there are many hundreds of these. Almost every offsetter uses a different method to calculate the carbon replaced, and not all are equally valid. So if you choose to buy offsets, be careful and conservative.</p>
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<h2>Business travel:</h2>
People who travel a lot (particularly by flying) generate larger-than-average carbon loads. (Remember that only your personal travel is included in your Cool Mass carbon footprint.) If this is the case for your household, perhaps you can:<br />
<ul>
    <li>Reduce your work travel to the extent possible. (Sometimes a videoconference or conference call with an internet or desktop sharing component will do the trick.)</li>
    <li>Consider asking your employer to purchase carbon offsets for unavoidable business travel.</li>
    <li>Buy your own offsets if your company cannot or will not contribute.</li>
    <li>Work with your company to help change &quot;company&quot; policy for travel.</li>
    <li>Some people even may want to think about whether the job is worth all the travel, but that's a very individual choice.</li>
</ul>
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<h2>What Makes for Good Offsets?</h2>
<ul>
    <li>Offsets Should Be Real: They should come from real projects that have actually been implemented or will be implemented.</li>
    <li>Offsets Should Be Additional: Because offsets are used to compensate for emission that the buyer produces, it is vital that the offsets come from a project that would not have happened otherwise. Such a project is called 'additional,' as in additional to business-as-usual.</li>
    <li>Offsets Should Be Based on a Realistic Baseline: The baseline estimates what the emission would have been, if the offset project was not implemented. it is therefore a hypothetical calculation and has to be done carefully and conservatively so that the achieved emission reductions are not overestimated. Offsets Should Be Quantified &amp; Monitored: Emission reductions from offset projects need to be accurately quantified. This requires experts from the fields (e.g. engineers who are familiar with measuring and quantifying methane emission from landfills). Each offset project should use an established standard to develop its baseline and monitoring plan.</li>
    <li>Offsets Should Be Independently Verified: All GHG reductions should be verified by an independent, qualified, third-party verifier according to approved methodologies and regulations. Verifiers should be entities whose compensation is not in any way dependent on the outcomes of their decisions.</li>
    <li>Offsets Should Be Unambiguously Owned and Listed in a Registry: Clear and uncontested title to offset credits should be established by contractual assignment and/or government recognition of ownership rights. Once sold, the original seller of the offset credit (and the project owner) must cede all rights to claim future credit for the same reductions in order to avoid double counting. Offsets must be serialized and accounted for in a registry or other approved tracking system.</li>
    <li>Offsets Should Address Permanence: There is a risk that emission reductions generated by bio-sequestration projects can be reversed, and thus are not permanent (e.g. forest destruction through illegal logging or fire or pests). These risks have to be addressed through buffer zones or temporary credits.</li>
    <li>Offsets Should Do No Net Harm and Strive to Lead to Co-Benefits: Offset projects should not cause or contribute to adverse effects on human health or the environment, but should instead seek to provide health and environmental co-benefits whenever possible.</li>
</ul>
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<h2>Sources:</h2>
Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds, by David Gershon. 2006, Empowerment Institute.&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.empowermentinstitute.net/"> http://www.empowermentinstitute.net/</a><br />
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What makes a good offset? The Stockholm Environmental Institute. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/consumer/OffsetQuality.html">http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/consumer/OffsetQuality.html<br />
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