What Are Greenhouse Gases?

Carbon is the fourth most prevalent element in the solar system. It's the bedrock of all known organic life. Carbon dioxide is recycled into oxygen by all plants and animals. It's in a sort of dynamo between animals and plants exchanging CO2 for oxygen, filtering out the natural clear background noise of the environment and providing a relatively nice planet to live on. It evolved this way. This is why life is possible on Earth.

The planet has come to this fragile state by a delicate balancing act perfected over 4.6 billion years. It arose out of nature, like a flower from concrete. One could spend a lifetime covering what the philosophers say about that! But science shows that Earth is fundamentally unguarded and vulnerable to changes that may be imperceptible to us.

By the late 18th century, the Enlightenment had brought not only revolutions of the mind and state, but also technological revolutions, and the mechanical amusements of the ultrarich landed aristocrats became affordable to a new class of merchant, who presided over factories and smokestacks to become captains of industry and railroad barons. Tall, brick exhaust towers emerged on the horizon, and a malaise of thick haze spread over the land.

Fast forward 150 years. In the 1950's, America returns from World War II flush with triumph and economic prosperity, and so began another technological revolution, where a new class of postwar successes slid smoothly into the prefab suburbs, all in gleaming chrome Cadillacs, streaming down the 16 lane highways full of cars, smiling in averaged-off numbers like 3.6, Mom & Dad & Buddy & Sis and even the family dog. Now, that same dream of owning some kind of great guzzling machine became not only feasible for the factory owner -- now it was affordable to the workers, too. The ubiquity of cars duplicated the effect of the paper mills and smokestacks of the industrial age, and the murky soup hanging over cities started getting thicker.

What people don't realize when they witness air pollution firsthand, is that it accumulates. The carbon that humanity is releasing right now is adding to a mass that contains the same carbon that was released when the first factory switched on. Greenhouse gases don't just go away. They accumulate.

Environmentalism and the broader tradition of conservationism have always existed in some form or another, but the modern Green movement is an unprecedented break with that most august and austere tradition. The effects of unchallenged emission of greenhouse gases are self-evident, and so even the factory owner has to stroke his chin and wonder aloud if the businesses of ruining the Earth and poisoning the seas are going to effect his bottom line. The U.S. military increasingly relies on solar power as it's primary source of electricity, since operational security demands an uninterrupted source of power. They're betting on the long-term viability of oil, or rather a lack thereof.

This is why buying offsets is so important. Whether you're a commuter paying off the 4 tons of carbon you produce per year, or a CEO of a Fortune 500 infrastructure company with an international fleet of cargo jets and supertankers, you can cancel out your carbon production by purchasing offsets and contributing to the global effort to change the world. It doesn't cost much, and it's for everybody! It's easy, and OffsetCarbonFootprint.org does everything for you and makes it easier than anyone else. Do the right thing for the environment. Now's a great time.