How You Can Be Carbon Neutral

Well, first of all, you need to have a substantial income to pay for all the hidden GHG taxes that the city, county, state, and federal governments are and will do to you. Examples of the hidden taxes include high gasoline prices due to the efforts to minimize refinery capacity in this country. And high food prices due to allocating corn crops to ethanol production. And high property taxes because county governments are already spending your tax dollars to reduce CO2 emissions, like buying expensive Toyota Priuses for county employees to drive. And, in the future, expect to pay a carbon tax of $20 per ton (perhaps $100 per year, see below).

Next, you need to do an accounting of your personal GHG emissions. If you own land, you can take credit for the CO2 absorbed by the plants (roughly 1 ton per year in good cropland areas and 0.4 tons per year in areas with open range. Most of your GHG emissions are CO2 emissions (most of the other GHG emissions (N2O, SF6, CH4, and heavier hydrocarbons) come from industrial sources). Your car is your biggest single source (19.6 lbs CO2 per gallon of gasoline). Maybe you emit 5 tons per year from gasoline burned. If you have a gas furnace and gas water heater, your next biggest is natural gas (11.7 lbs/therm). Another 5 tons per year or so. Next is electricity (671 lbs/MWh in the Pacific Northwest, but 1,408 in Texas and the U.S. highest is 1,966 lbs/MWh in Illinois). Probably another 2 tons per year (unless you have electric heat in your home).

For now, I am ignoring your GHG emissions associated with your purchases of food, clothing, televisions, books, and everything else you love, like breathing (you probably exhale about a half ton of CO2 per year.)

So you are responsible for about 6 tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, you could buy 6 acres of open land (at 1 ton per acre per year), or 15 acres of open range land (at 0.4 ton per acre) to absorb that CO2. :)

Or you buy an acre of land to garden to offset the breathing and electricity, and ride a bike everywhere you go! Zowee, that sounds like the liberal version of paradise!

Your choice!