Most of us are increasingly aware that our daily lives contribute to climate change. Every time we drive, fly, or heat our homes, we release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The same is true for our church building. As we work towards the Silver Eco Church Award, we are doing an assessment for Emmanuel so that we can work towards reducing the size of our carbon footprint. But what if there was a practical way to balance out these unavoidable emissions while we work toward reducing them, both in our church context and in our personal lives?
What is carbon offsetting?
Carbon offsetting is fairly simple: when you can’t avoid producing carbon emissions, you compensate by supporting projects that reduce or remove carbon dioxide elsewhere. If you’ve added carbon to the atmosphere, you invest in removing an equivalent amount somewhere else. These projects might include planting forests that absorb CO₂, funding renewable energy that replaces fossil fuels, or supporting communities to adopt cleaner cooking methods.
How does it work?
Organisations calculate the carbon footprint of specific activities – a flight to Spain, for instance, or a year’s heating. You purchase ‘carbon credits’ equivalent to those emissions, and your money funds verified environmental projects.
Getting started
A few schemes to explore are:
climatestewards.org (part of the A Rocha family of organisations,
caring for God’s creation around the world)
worldlandtrust.org/what-we-do/carbon-balanced
mycarbonplan.org
carbonneutralbritain.org/pages/become-carbon-neutral
A quick web search will give you many others too.
A call to faithful stewardship
As Christians, we’re called to be good stewards of God’s creation. Genesis reminds us that we’re appointed to tend and care for the earth, not merely to use and exploit it. Carbon offsetting isn’t a perfect solution, and it shouldn’t replace our efforts to reduce consumption in the first place. But it offers a practical way to take responsibility for the emissions we genuinely can’t avoid.
Would you consider offsetting your next flight, your car journeys, or even your entire household footprint? It’s a small but meaningful way to live out our responsibility to care for creation and our neighbours – especially those in vulnerable communities already suffering the worst effects of climate change.