Carbonfund.org Trip Planning & Itineraries

Carbonfund.org

Make your travel plans in 2008 carbon neutral by offsetting your carbon footprint.

Climate change, or global warming, is the changing of our global climate due to the build up of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Is it happening? Yes. For example:

• 2005 was the hottest year on record.
• Greenland’s glaciers are melting 2.5 times faster than a decade ago. If they melt entirely the world’s oceans will rise 20 feet.
• Hurricanes are becoming more severe due to higher water temperatures.
• Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at a 650,000 year high.

To address this concern, Viator has partnered with Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about the dangers of climate change and makes it easy and affordable for individuals, businesses and organizations to reduce their climate impact. They are reducing the threat of climate change by promoting low-cost carbon reductions and supporting renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects that reduce and offset carbon dioxide emissions.

Working with Carbonfund.org, Viator has developed a roadmap to offset its company carbon emissions. We aim to become 100% Carbonfree™ by working to offset all corporate travel, office energy usage and shipping costs. We encourage our entire staff to offset their personal energy usage by reducing and offsetting. We also want to encourage fellow travelers to offset their carbon footprint in 2008. Whether you want to focus on offsetting your business or personal travel or other energy usage contributions made through this partnership will support Carbonfund.org’s combination of renewable energy, reforestation, and energy efficiency projects.

What are Carbon Offsets?
Carbon offsets are the process of reducing a ton of carbon dioxide emissions in another location for the emissions caused in the home, office, commute, travel or other activities that use energy and cause emissions. Carbon offsets enable anyone to reduce their climate footprint by supporting projects, typically energy efficiency, renewable energy, sequestration, biomass, etc. that reduce carbon dioxide emissions to offset one’s own climate footprint. Carbon dioxide emissions are caused by the burning of fossil fuels: oil, coal and natural gas. Obviously, your car uses gasoline. But your house and office as well as the factory that produces your clothes or restaurants, movie theaters and other places we use every day use electricity and energy that generally comes from power plants that use fossil fuels. More than 50% of America’s electricity is derived from coal and virtually all our transportation needs are fueled by oil. The typical American is responsible for 10 tons of CO₂ emissions annually through their direct energy use of home, cars and air travel, and about 23 tons of CO₂ including their purchases, activities and the other services we all share throughout the economy.