Usa business

USA Today recently reported that after a post 9/11 slump, air travel has risen to a record high. An Arbitron study compiled just two years after flights had come to a standstill shows that half of this country’s 92 plus million air travelers routinely take two or more trips annually. Seventeen million qualify as frequent filers, traveling four to nine times a year. Few of us give a second thought to flying for holidays, vacations and business meetings.

If you haven’t seen the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth on the Earth’s climate crisis featuring Al Gore as he lectured around the world, you need to make it a priority.

An Inconvenient Truth emphasizes that we need to wake up to the fact that the U.S. alone is burning through mega gallons of fossil fuel on hundreds of daily flights, which emit megatons of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. Just an average personal roundtrip of 1,660 miles consumes enough fuel to release 2,258 pounds of gases into the atmosphere, injecting more than a ton of pollution into the air we breathe.

After watching, An Inconvenient Truth, I hope you are compelled to reconsider holiday, business and leisure plans, finding ways to fly less and travel closer to home. Many also are salving their conscience with another practical option. They are purchasing “Green Tags” to offset the carbon we personally generate when we fly or drive. These modest fees, easily calculated online, directly fund renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power.

Buying one green tag can offset an average air trip for less than $25.00. We can purchase offsets one trip at a time or for the whole year. Reliable sources include GreenTagsUSA.org and MyClimate.org. Some travel companies take care of this detail when booking a flight and may even match client contributions.

Observers predict that buying Green Tags will become as familiar as recycling and water conversation. Newsweek International has referred to carbon offsets as one of the ‘hottest new trends’ for travel—just the ticket for a guilt-free trip.

Living holistically includes replenishing not only our mind, body and spirit—it includes replenishing Mother Earth. Let us not forget Mother Earth is our home this time around—if we continue to chop holes in the Mother ship—it is safe to say, we will perish.