RE: Sustainability Call to Action: Help Create “Ethical Travel" Standard

Avoiding air travel is, without doubt, the decisive step.

But many of us will continue to use air travel, but on a carbon diet.

Part of the ethics of travel needs to be the routine payment of an "offset".  Some exist already, but much more attention needs to be paid to those which promote justice/community development objectives, as well as reducing carbon.

I've been involved in setting up two local carbon compensation fund.  The first. the Evanston Climate Action Fund, is sponsored by the Evanston Community Foundation. Contributions are used to make local non-profits more energy efficient, with day care centers as the initial priority.  As the resources become available, the Fund will fund the retrofit of low-income homes.  The Communtiy Foundation will organize its first introductory workshop this fall and make its first grants by year end. The challenge, of course, is to build the ethos in the community that we are indeed ethical travelers and, as a matter of course, make our offest payments.

The second is the Aboriginal Climate Action Fund of the Melbourne Parliament of the World's Religions.  It is targeted to the 5,000+ air travelers to the December 2009 Parliament event in Melbourne.  The Fund will be launched within the next few weeks. It will be offered to participants as they sign up for the event.  Contributions will fund community development & climate projects in Australian Aboriginal communities.  

I'll let you know how these two experiments evolve.  My hope is that similar models will make the idea of offsets much more local, and hence more salient.