This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while now. One of the reasons I stick with DreamHost for my web hosting provider is that they are carbon-neutral. That’s great! I’ve heard a lot of businesses doing this, and while I’m not sure of the real benefit of simply offsetting your carbon footprint in lieu of reducing your impact with efficient living, I think it is a good idea when combined with efforts to reduce that footprint.

Climate change is a very important issue right now, and whether you fall into the “the earth is just going through a warming phase” or the “we’re destroying the planet” camp, it is important to be aware of your impact to the environment, to reduce your impact as much as you can, and to offset what you can’t reduce. If nothing else, reducing your carbon footprint is bound to reduce your energy costs as well.

Purchasing carbon offsets is one way to help, as the money goes to all sorts of great programs working on things like renewable energy projects and reforestation. With renewable energy projects in particular, you know that your money is going to reduce our need to use finite resources like oil and thereby reduce global conflicts over resources. In today’s world, those conflicts are more and more apparent. So… there’s the peace aspect of it as well. Reducing the world’s need to use finite resources reduces our need to fight over those resources. This can only be a good thing.

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