Worldchange Gift

With lots of you graduating, your parents are presumably looking for gifts to commemorate this joyous occasion. For the environmentally responsible parents WorldChanging is offering a very unique gift. The organization will wipe your carbon slate clean. Depending on the level of donation, they'll remove all the guilt of the carbon emissions you caused in your childhood, college or working life.

From the website of WorldChanging,

"Your grad gets to head out into the world with the moral weight of their personal choices lifted from their shoulders, you get to show your love and respect, the climate gets a bit of a break and Worldchanging gets the funds we need to continue our prize-winning work exploring the solutions that will create real, lasting change. Half your gift is even tax-deductible!"

The amount of money you donate will be used to buy carbon offsets from TerraPass. For $6,000, they'll offset all the climate emissions you racked up until high school graduation. For $7,500, they'll offset childhood and university years. For $25,000, they'll offset youth, college and working careers.

In addition, you'll also get a certificate saying that you're carbon slate is clean. Yes, this means there is a way to pay back for all the emissions you've caused and be good again. Living a carbon neutral life is trendy and it is certainly easier to pay for your deeds than change your bulb or get an electric car. Last year individuals spent $331 million to buy carbon offsets for their personal life. Most of that money was used to continue research on carbon emissions and developing better economic and industrial systems to tackle the climate problems.

This is a really innovative way to sell carbon offsets to individuals. The carbon offsets market is growing rapidly in developing countries. In India I've seen a lot of carbon credit consultancies start up and a lot of farmers are earning from it. Statistically, the carbon footprint of an average Indian is much lower than the world average because of the huge rural population that lives without electricity and depend chiefly on farming for livelihood. But in the cities, living responsibly is not common and emissions are uncontrolled.