In addition to directly reducing your carbon footprint,  please be aware of the opportunity to invest money in projects that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere in the world. By doing this you can in effect pay for reductions in carbon emissions equal to, for example, driving your car to work everyday or flying off on holiday.

For example, by estimating how much CO2 will be saved by the construction of a wind-turbine and then dividing this by the cost of the wind turbine, a number can be found that represents the cost of saving 1 tonne of CO2 in this way.  You can then pay for driving 10000 miles a year in your car, which generates 2-3 tonnes of CO2, at the relevant cost per tonne (it works out to be about £21...not much for 10000 miles of CO2!)*.

Whilst it would no doubt be better to find a way to directly reduce your emissions from these sources, often it is not always (at least at present) possible to provide complete reductions in carbon emissions in all areas of your lifestyle. 'Carbon offsetting' in this way provides one of the many valuable tools we have to combat climate change. Not only that, it is also ethical and equitable in terms of the development of poorer nations...

The best providers of this service run projects in poorer and developing countries that are funded by the money used to buy these 'carbon offsets'. This means that your money will be invested in countries where its value is far greater than it is here! Apart from reductions in carbon emissions, these countries also benefit from the increased investment in the form of jobs. In the future, projects like these will help liberate vulnerable people from the fluctuating and dangerously high price of oil and fossil fuel energies...

One thing to be cautious with companies that offer carbon offsetting is their credibility. In the last year, offsetting Standards have been developed and this has produced high-quality verification that CO2 is being saved.  Keep an eye out for good companies that sign-up to these Standards and  independant verification. The cynics may say that any of these companies could just take your money...not only will Standards make this view increasingly outdated, but no business survives long with that model and the best companies are falling over themselves to prove they are the most credible (to our benefit).

Thankfully,  great providers already exist. One that comes highly recommended by Prof. Nicholas Stern  (of the Stern Review 2006 and top ethical Climate Change economist, take it from me or his wikipedia page, he knows what he's talking about!) and that is used by his family is www.climatecare.org. Climatecare is at the forefront of the drive to get Standards in place in order to make carbon offsetting a commonly used option. Another which looks good and has a good selection of projects is www.carbonneutral.com. These websites have their own calculators which are very simple to use or you can use the governments official website to calculate your emissions and take that figure as a guide. Please take time to look around www.climatecare.org** as it has plenty of other useful sections.

One last thing, please do not use these as an excuse for or alternative to making real reductions in CO2 emissions in your life. Make those first, then complement that with carbon offsetting as a way of reducing the impact we inately have by living in a carbon intense country that doesn't yet have the infrastructure to support deeper or 100% reductions. It will take time for options to make deeper real reductions to appear, use this to fill the gap for now and support low-carbon development where it is needed.

*estimated using www.climatecare.org's calculator

**please do not be put off by it appearing as www.jpmorganclimatecare.com, that is the correct address.