AMY OBENSKI

The Scoop on Cli­mate Change and Trees

Cur­rently, the burn­ing of trop­i­cal forests con­tributes to between 12% and 20% of global green­house gas emis­sions which is more CO2 than the entire trans­porta­tion sec­tor com­bined! Once burned, these forests do not regen­er­ate and the species and local com­mu­ni­ties that depend on them are lost for­ever. Addi­tion­ally, the burn­ing of trop­i­cal forests cre­ates a neg­a­tive feed­back loop which fur­thers deser­ti­fi­ca­tion and the warm­ing of the planet. The most effec­tive, cheap­est, and fastest way to limit our global emis­sions is to pro­tect trop­i­cal forests from destruc­tion. (Car­bon Tree)

Car­bon Con­scious Tour

To raise aware­ness about this issue, I’m going on a three-month “Car­bon Con­scious” Tour for Spring of 2012. The vision is to tour and play music, burn as lit­tle fuel as pos­si­ble, raise aware­ness and pay for my car­bon off­sets. And though it is ironic to burn fuel and raise aware­ness about cli­mate change, it is also per­fect in many ways.

Music tour­ing is extremely heavy on fuel, and I think so many big, well known artists are really waste­ful when it comes to fuel: trav­el­ing around in huge buses, not pay­ing off­sets, etc. I’m a pro­fes­sional musi­cian with a Bachelor’s in Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, and it’s a strug­gle every day to try and lower my con­sump­tion. This tour would be my way of giv­ing back.

I’ll be focus­ing my efforts on the Car­bon Tree Con­ser­va­tion Fund. Car­bon Tree works to reduce car­bon emis­sions caused by trop­i­cal defor­esta­tion and to pro­tect bio­di­ver­sity and endan­gered habitats.

I will be off­set­ting the cost my tour has on the envi­ron­ment by donat­ing money to Car­bon Tree. And dur­ing the tour I will be encour­ag­ing oth­ers to also pay to off­set their car­bon emis­sions from their activities.

Learn more about Car­bon Tree.

Car­bon Offsets

A car­bon off­set is a reduc­tion in emis­sions of green­house gasses in order to com­pen­sate for or to off­set an emis­sion made else­where. For exam­ple, to make up for the car and air­plane pol­lu­tion from my tour, I will be pay­ing money to Car­bon Tree, who will put that money toward the pre­ven­tion of defor­esta­tion, thus pre­vent­ing the release of more green­house gasses into the atmosphere.

Dona­tions

Money donated to the tour will be spent on car­bon off­sets, green­ing the tour, and some travel costs if needed. If there is any money left over it will be donated to Car­bon Tree. Right now we are look­ing to raise about a thou­sand dol­lars. If you’d like to donate please send money via paypal.

Spon­sor the Tour

I am look­ing for spon­sors! Being a spon­sor can mean any­thing from giv­ing money to donat­ing ser­vices or items. If you are inter­ested in spon­sor­ing the tour please con­tact me at contactamy@obenski.net and I’ll send you more details.