Carbon offsets for flights are incredibly cheap. They cost less than the WiFi, less even than the tapas snack box you bought in your United flight. To offset a metric ton of CO2 emissions runs about $12. A roundtrip economy flight from LAX to JKF is about $8 to offset. Flying 100,000 miles a year (more than Eric Holthaus!) would cost $189 to offset. So we’re talking small surcharges, on the order of 1–2%.
The three biggest corporate spenders on business travel (IBM, Deloitte, and Boeing) spend almost $1.3 billion a year on airfare. It sounds like a lot (because it is), but it’s a tiny part of their revenues — IBM, Deloitte, and Boeing made over $200 billion last year.
At Deloitte, business travel accounts for 70%+ of their carbon emissions.
Quick back-of-the-envelope math then. Airfare cost of $1.3 billion. This means carbon offset costs would be $20 million (just over 1.5%). Compared to revenues, that’s one-one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%).
I’m not a carbon scientist, so maybe I’m missing something here. Why isn’t every business doing this?
