Nope, that's not my goal for 2008. Fact is, I'm not sure what my goal for this blog will become for next year, but that's a topic for a future post.

The concept of "double carbon neutral" was raised recently by David Douglas, vice president for eco-responsibility at Sun Microsystems. In his blog, he asked:

If it is good to offset your emissions, is it even better to offset your emissions twice?

To give Douglas' question some context, Sun's carbon strategy is to reduce its carbon footprint as much as possible — that is to say Sun places a priority on conservation rather than investing in offsets. Douglas acknowledges that strategy keeps Sun from claiming to be carbon neutral. He also acknowledges there will be a point where Sun's investment in carbon reduction will return less on investment than it does today. That's when, he says, they'll likely consider carbon offsets.

Clearly Douglas raises the question about doubling offsets to beg one question: what's the relative PR value of conservation vs. being able to claim carbon neutrality (or double carbon neutrality)? In other words:

Should a double carbon neutral company be considered better than a company like Sun that is actually reducing their carbon footprint?

I'd say: of course not. But I won't be at all surprised to see the concept of double carbon neutrality become a broader topic of conversation.

What do you think?

Carbon Neutral Journal's thoughts are brought to you by Hawtin Jorgensen Architects.

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