Kiwiburn, carbon offsetting and trees - your opinion?

[Dr Windy]

One of our principles is to Leave No Trace. Hence we want to reduce the
net greenhouse gas emissions from Kiwiburn. More than 95% of those
emissions come from transport to and from the event. We have the ride
share scheme but, until everyone owns an electric car, it's hard to
prevent our transport emissions. However, we can reduce the damage
those emissions cause by offsetting them. This basically means planting
enough trees to absorb the carbon dioxide emitted by our cars, so that
there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases. We estimate this will
cost about $2.50 of your ticket money. Should we do this?

For international travelers, one person attending Kiwiburn from the US
has roughly the same emissions as one hundred people attending Kiwiburn
from Auckland and Wellington. So we are only planning on accounting for
emissions from travel within New Zealand. If you're coming to Kiwiburn
from overseas, then we're keen to help you find a way to offset your
own travel emissions. Contact Dr Happyinmotion for details of this, it
could be far easier than you think.

[Rich]

We could save quite a lot of energy by running a bus from Wellington/Auckland. The trouble is, everyone has a reason why they need to have their own transport.

[brettj]

I like this idea if i can help in anyway i am very keen

[jetpilot]

Sounds like a good plan to me.

Is the money going to be donated to an appropriate fund/organisation, or was the plan to try and plant some trees on site or nearby?

I know the contact details for some appropriate park rangers in Christchurch, but I'm guessing they'll be other reserves doing planting in the North Island too.

[Dr Windy]

We are investigating potential projects with Taupo District Council in an attempt to make it beneficial to the community that has made Kiwiburn welcome. If there is nothing available around Taupo area, we'll cast the net wider.

Dr Happyinmotion as our resident expert on climate change *insert list of letters after his name here that spell out I Know What I'm Talking About) can give you a list of criteria for a project to be suitable. All of that information will be on the documents that go on the website, should the general burner community agree that this is a good idea.

[Cass]

Go Dr Windy! I also like the idea of it being Taupo-region based, too.

Big Thumbs Up!

[Gecko]

The tree planting is a cool idea, not only will it help offset the carbons it will leave a bit of a burner legacy
Ride sharing is cool, and my van is open to accommodate anyone in the Auckland/Waikato region that may need a ride.
What about things like petrol generators and contained fires? all offset by trees?
You could print on recyclable paper if you need to print anything. We could make compost out of organic waste! it would great fertilizer for the trees

[happyinmotion]

We're going to include gennies and wood for the Man. And kero for fire spinners, eleccy for the pony shed, and anything else we can think of. However, running the numbers, it looks like 95%+ of our emissions are from people getting to and from the event.

[jack]

Good idea, I'm happy to help in any way I can

...bringing guite a bit of fuel

[Fern :)]

Fabulous idea.

[happyinmotion]

Question for Jack and the fire breathers/spinners:
In the calculations, I've got you down for a generous 80 litres of kero. Is this in the right ball park for all the fire players?

It's not a big factor, I estimate you're less than 0.5% of our emissions, but I'm keen to know that I've got the numbers close enough.

Boy, do all those car trips add up...

[yonderman]

Greetings
Its a great initiative and the right thing to do in concept. I am in agreement that we can aim to offset internal travel by way of tree planting and car pooling, but the international travel thing may just have to be thought of as the reality-state of our modern technology. One thing to think about is that some burners will be planning an overseas vacation that is timed to take in Kiwiburn, and its possible that the emissions associated with their travel might not be counted (ie they'd be travelling anyway). However, I think thats skirting round the issue that these jumbo jets cause major emissions. So with that partly in the too hard basket I am all for making it a zero emissions for NZ domestic travellers.
Yonderman (in Reno again, and will be taking one of those gas guzzlers home to NZ on 30 Sept - Sunday).

[Dr Windy]

We forgive you, Mark.

(read: we want you back)

[bekitty]

[happyinmotion]

Can I just make the point that trees are happiest planted en masse, and need some degree of looking after every few years. Hence it will be more effective for us to give some money to a tree-planting organisation than to plant our own. And thus that's the plan.

But don't let that stop you from planting trees, the more the merrier...

[Hana]

When these trees get planted, how long will it be before they are cut down and what will they be used for? Is there a certain amount of years that the trees must grow before we have almost covered all the carbon emissions we have made. I like the idea of reducing as much as possible and setting off our carbon emmissions but i always wondered if this was some kind of new marketing scheeme? Cause i have seen some things around like "Pay just $20 to offset your carbon footprint!! DO IT NOW!!" Not to put a damper on anything Just wondering..

And im just curious, how many trees would actually need to be planted?

[Dr Windy]

Part of the requirement for a suitable tree planting scheme for us to donate to would be that the trees will be around for long enough to grow Big and Strong and Gaseous (?)

As a non-boffin, I don't have the details of exactly how many and how long, but luckily we do have such a boffin on board in the form of Dr Science, who has done the maths and will no doubt be sticking his hand up with info shortly.

(since we've asked Dr Science to investigate any schemes that are available, you can bet your sweet Jafa ass that the ones he comes back with will fit the criteria. His middle name is Analabouttheenvironment - Ann for short)

The possibility of it being a marketing thing is real, which is one of the reasons we are looking at privately funding an actual reforestation program chosen by Kiwiburn, rather than just sticking money into a scheme that says "Offset Your Carbons Today! And get this free set of Ginsu knives!"

*cue dr science to come say something intellectual and reassuring*

[happyinmotion]

"Well, this is nothing to worry about. There's a lot of it about — probably a virus."

If the trees are chopped down and the carbon in the wood is then used for buildings or what have you, then that carbon is still locked up, and more trees can be planted to absorb more carbon.

So there's no problem with the trees being cut down, so long as the land is replanted. That way, the the amount of carbon locked up keeps increasing. And most of the carbon absorbed by a forest ends up in the soil and roots, not in the wood of the trees themselves, so chopping down and replanting can potentially store more than just letting mature forest grow up.

What matters is making sure that whatever land is forested doesn't end up being converted back as bare land in several decades time.

However, we've yet to make a decision on how we'll offset our emissions, whether it'll be through reforestation, plantation forestation, or investing in other schemes. This is an area where I'm looking into this in more detail, and an area where global progress is pretty rapid, so things are changing all the time.

(Also, will tree planting solve global warming? Well, throwing some (very) rough figures around, turning all of NZ's scrub into healthy forest would suck up roughly one year's worth of NZ's total emissions. So tree planting isn't the only answer, and won't let us continue with business as usual. But it helps, and every little bit of help is needed.)

[Hana]

Mmmmk

Kinda what i was meaning by the carbon offsetting thing being a scam or something is, arnt the trees going to be planted for use of timber etc etc anyway? Say for example you can invest in pine forests that will be used for timber and get the return in say 20 years time or something, why not just say "Hey, if you give us your $$ we''l plant these trees and you can off-set your carbon foot print", when in fact the trees were already going to be planted.

please forgive my ignorance if i am completely off on the track, i dont actually know much about this topic, this was just a thaught that i had.

[Rich]

I think the idea is that if you have a marginal dairy farm (for instance) the carbon credit bit tips the balance between keeping cows (generating lots of carbon) and planting trees on the site.