PAOLITA GOES CARBON NEUTRAL ♻️

The biggest challenge we face is helping people change habits that are very ingrained into their lifestyles. People have busy lives and a lot of different things to worry about and we need to assume this in the way we design our product. It’s challenging to stress the importance of taking climate action whilst not coming across as pushy or judgmental. Ultimately, we just want people to change their habits in the right direction as the direction is what’s important not the starting point!

In my previous job, I worked on a project where the team and I travelled multiple times to and from San Francisco. Whilst on those flights I read Michael E Mann’s “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” and “Nudge” By Richard Thaler. I realised that although everyone on my team had a deep concern about the environment there were many behavioural nudges such as air miles encouraging unnecessary emissions. I decided to think about how I could flip this on its head. A year later I was working on an early version of Carbn with my Co-founder Jacob.

Speaking to our users. It gives me a lot of hope to see how many people are quietly doing their bit to tackle the climate crisis. It is also hugely rewarding to hear about their enthusiasm about what we are building.

That is a very strong argument, I used to believe it too and still do to an extent. However, large corporations and the politicians that regulate them only respond to short-term incentives. As consumers, voters, employees, we need to signal how important this issue is to use through the choices we make for our own lives and the climate action we take. Otherwise, they will continue with business as usual, until it’s too late.

Broadly defined, global warming is the increase in the Earth’s average temperature due to increasing levels of greenhouse gas.

The “climate” describes the weather conditions expected in a region at a certain time of year. The weather, meanwhile, is what occurs at a specific time. You can determine the weather where you are now by simply looking out the window. The climate, however, is what you experience throughout summer, autumn, winter and spring.

Climate change, therefore, describes the regional and global changes in climate patterns that occur as a result of the greenhouse effect. Global warming is an example of these changes. One hot summer’s day isn’t caused by climate change and global warming. But increasingly hot summers year on year in certain places are.

However, the impacts of climate change are varied, with some places even experiencing colder temperatures. That’s why scientists today prefer the term “climate change” to “global warming”, which doesn’t account for the other changes to our planet.

Offsetting has taken off in the last few years and I think that it’s fantastic that so many planet-saving projects are getting financed through this mechanism.

However, some dubious offsetting projects aren’t verified by the most reputable standards agencies (VERRA, Gold Standard). Also, offsets shouldn’t make people complacent.

The way we produce, consume and regulate also need to change for us to tackle this crisis. I hope that in 5 years offsets will be used alongside other types of climate action and that the standards agencies will succeed in ensuring that the offset market works effectively and transparently.

You can measure your carbon footprint by downloading the Carbn app and going through the onboarding process. The app gives you a detailed granular breakdown which will help you focus on changing your carbon-intensive habits. The tool primarily uses data points from various governmental sources, academic studies, and NGOs and was built by Climate scientists from Imperial College London and Oxford University.