Carbon Offsetting is a way to take responsibility for the carbon emissions your lifestyle causes. To drive a car, fly and eat meat causes rather high carbon dioxide emissions, that causes climate change – that causes global warming.
When you carbon offset you pay money for the amount of carbon dioxide your lifestyle causes. The money are invested in climate projects that reduce the same amount of carbon dioxide as you have caused – so that the sum of the emissions is zero or less. You can reduce emissions either by helping somebody else lower their emissions or by removing emissions from the atmosphere.
Carbon offsetting is often made possible by climate projects in developing countries – for instance energy efficiency projects or wind or solar plants.
To be on the safe side that you actually achieve climate benefit when you carbon offset – the climate projects should be reliably certified. The most reliable projects are both UN and Gold Standard-certified (that WWF is behind among others).
At GoClimate.org we help you offset your emissions with projects that are both UN and Gold Standard-certified.
If you want to know more, go to GoClimate.org