Anxious about your impact? This N.W.T. man says he's been carbon neutral for 15 years
CBC
Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.
Andrew Robinson, a stay-at-home dad and self-described "energy nerd" in the N.W.T., says he's been carbon neutral since 2007 — and it isn't as hard as people think.
He started building an energy-efficient duplex in Yellowknife's Niven neighbourhood seven years ago that helped his family reduce their carbon footprint significantly. But he also pointed to a solution that's much easier than constructing a new house.
"You can be carbon neutral just by buying carbon offsets," he said.
Carbon offsetting is a way to "cancel out" carbon emissions that have been spewed into the atmosphere. They're a tool in the fight against climate change which have drawn some debate, and they work by letting emitters (including individuals, governments or businesses) fund and take credit for greenhouse gas reductions from a different project or activity elsewhere.
"In some parts of the world, there's a lot more renewable resources and a lot less money," said Robinson. Because of that, he said, a $20 carbon offset can go a long way in a community that can't afford to install its own solar panels.
Robinson co-authored a study, released in 2020 by Alternatives North, that said carbon offsets would be the "most immediate and affordable" way for the territory to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
But there are different schools of thought about whether offsets actually reduce emissions, and some experts say they can do more harm than good, while others say they can play a significant role in reducing emissions if properly managed.
Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician at Stanton Territorial Hospital who ran in the Green Party's leadership race last year, told CBC News from The Conference of Parties (COP) in Scotland that part of the value of carbon offsets is that they make people aware of their own own carbon footprints.
"It makes you go through the process of counting [what your carbon footprint is]. And we know that anything that gets measured, gets managed, and that can be a really important first step to decreasing your carbon footprint."
Howard said people also tend to misjudge what their biggest carbon creators are.
"We overweight recycling, and we tend to underweight things like heating and electricity," she said.
"Most people at this COP will say, 'reduce as much as you can and then ... use offsets to make up the rest. So it's the bit to get you that extra little bit of the way to your goal. But it definitely isn't licence for us to just keep living the way we're living."
The most it's ever cost Robinson to offset a year's worth of carbon, he said, was $600.
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