[/caption]Even if I flunked one grading period of my high school Chemistry and even if Science is a subject I don't particularly have a strong affection with, I know what global warming is. It is partly caused by human activities. We released too much greenhouse gases---carbon dioxide and methane are some examples---into the atmosphere, so that they form a kind of blanket that traps the heat that entered the planet instead of being bounced back out of the planet.
There is no panacea to global warming, but the most common, one that has in fact done by many people in many places, is to plant trees. For, trees sequester carbon.
I've done tree planting before, and I could tell it's exhausting.
But to those who want to help Mother Earth but have no time to go out and plant trees, one can blog. Yes, in lieu of planting is blogging.
For example, I've signed up for the Carbon Neutral Blogs initiative of StockDisplays, a company that manufactures "poster frames, banner stands, light boxes, pavement signs, exhibition stands," among others.
"The idea basically is that for every blog which mentions the initiative and adds one of these buttons to their sidebar...(the green button with a frog you see on the right), Stock Displays will plant a tree for them – making their blog carbon neutral. It’s simple really, you do something for us and we do something for you!"
The initiative was born of the fact that:
Every blog that attracts 15,000 hits per month generates on average around 3.5kg of carbon every year – this figure is worked...by Alexander Wissner-Gross, PhD, physicist at Harvard University and environmental activist. His study took into account the power consumed by computer usage, electricity hours and server cooler systems. Although 3.5kg’s a year doesn’t sound like a lot, when you consider that last February The Sunday Times reported that there was around 200m blogs in the world, it means that with an average readership of 15,000 hits per month blogs alone contribute around 700,000 tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere every year.
Where will the trees be planted?
They will be planted in one of these four forests: San Bernardino National Forest, the Butler II burn; Plumas National Forest, the Moonlight fire; Huron-Manistee National Forest, Kirtland Warbler nesting habitat restoration; Ocala National Forest, longleaf pine restoration.
None will be planted in the Philippines. But that doesn't matter because global warming is not a local problem. "Everything must go somewhere,"one of the four laws of ecology says. So signing up for the Carbon Neutral Blogs initiative is not a futile exercise.
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