Mountain View Carbon Neutral Again in 2019
During the recent Celebration of God’s Creation luncheon and campaign you donated a total of $1500 towards combating climate change via sequestration of carbon dioxide. $700 will go the reforestation at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the rest towards reforestation and high efficiency clean cook stoves in Central America. Trees at Pine Ridge take up to 100 years to mature while those in Central America typically take 10 years and sequester CO2 at 10 times the rate at Pine Ridge.
This will be the 4th year that the Mt. View church building has been carbon neutral. This money not only sequestesr CO2 ,but will help indigenous communities by providing jobs, income, help restore water sheds and restore/improve local ecosystems.
Our partner in this process, Trees Water, People out of Fort Collins, has calculated that Mountain View’s contributions have funded the removal of more than 400 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
From many resent news releases we can recognize that the need to the reduce greenhouse gasses is much more urgent than previously thought. Climate change is happening at a much faster pace than expected. The sea level is rising more quickly, the ocean has become more acidic, and the weather has turned more unstable with more intense storms. This makes it imperative that we all take responsibility to critically examine our own carbon footprints and take action to reduce our own greenhouse emissions.
To this end we provide below a simple way for you to estimate your CO2 emissions. After computing your CO2 footprint, we encourage you to make a commitment to reduce your emissions by a specific amount, with the goal of reaching at least 50% reduction by 2025. Several Families are already at 100%. The major contributions to your carbon footprint are use of natural gas, electrical power, transportation, and food. Your yearly natural gas and electrical consumption are available from your utility company or from comparing bills over the past year. If you eat 2000 lb of food a year (the national average) this amounts to from 2 to 20 Tons of CO2 depending on your choices for protein, see below.
Compute Your Carbon Footprint
Natural Gas Consumption: Therms/Year x 5.8 Tons CO2/Therm = ________
Electrical Consumption: kWh/Year x 0.9 Tons CO2/kWh = ________
Gasoline Consumption: 100 Gallons/Year x 1 Tons CO2/100Gal = ________
Air Travel: 1000 Miles/Year x 0.2 Tons CO2/1000 Miles = ________
Food approximately 2 to 10 Tons of CO2/person ________
Total CO2 Footprint ________
Pledge: I/we pledge to reduce my/our CO2 footprint by reducing emissions and/or purchasing carbon offsets by _______% by 2025
Signed________________________________________________
CO2 Sequestration Sites (or contact your Green Team)
1.Trees Water People, Ft. Collins: patricia@treeswaterpeople.org
2.OZG Accredited by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification: https://www.ozg.be/en/plant-a-tree/
References
1. simpleserioussolvable.org Excellent description on the seriousness of the problem and solutions
2. Drawdown, book describing over 100 viable solutions to reduce greenhouse gasses