Going Carbon-Neutral

The first time I heard about a company going Carbon-Neutral was on SAM's website. SAM of course is Sustainable Asset Management, which produced one of my favorite reports. I kind of dismissed what I saw in SAM's carbon neutral report. Then, a couple of weeks ago, WSJ published an article on how it is becoming hip to be Carbon-Neutral.

I found out that the makers of TechPolicy's favorite movie, The Day After Tomorrow, have also gone carbon-neutral.  Both SAM and The Day After Tomorrow have chosen Future Forests as their partner in becoming Carbon-Neutral.

Inspired by these examples, I calculated the cost of going carbon-neutral for my upcoming trip to India. This is what I was told:

Your flight will cover 15476 Miles and produce 6136.84 pounds of CO2.

Go CarbonNeutral!
Plant 4 trees to make your flight CarbonNeutral - click here to buy

Planting your trees will cost $44.84 and you will receive a certificate, info about your chosen forest, and a CarbonNeutral baggage tag.

A Carbon-Neutral baggage tag for $45? That will add an additional 3% on my travel costs. Am I ready to go that far to be Carbon-Neutral?

UPDATE (07/18/05): Joel Makower points to carbon neutral driving, but I am going to focus on air travel. Check out MyClimate.org.