Carbon Footprint
The real cost of 1 tonne of CO2: Translating carbon into hectares
Every business carbon footprint report ends with a number, the amount of carbon emissions produced by the business, less the amount of carbon reduced and offset, given in tonnes of CO₂. Many of the people who sign off on that number, including those who paid for it, cannot picture what it represents on the ground. A tonne is a unit of mass. CO₂ is invisible. The link between the amount offset in the report and a real piece of restored forest somewhere in the world is almost never indicated.
