Rather than waiting for our current conservative North American governments to do anything serious on greenhouse gas emissions, which they won’t, some companies are doing it on their own.

Some recent examples:

It obviously needs to happen more frequently to have a large effect, but it’s a start. It’s also great PR; it increases my respect for, and therefore usage, of Google. I always liked Whole Foods but on recent business trips I made an extra effort to shop there after hearing this news.

Related to this, there’s a growing movement to go “Carbon neutral.” David Suzukis site has a good write-up on what carbon neutral means and how to do it. I had also heard recently about an energy company in the Canadian oil sands that was attempting to go carbon neutral, which is huge since apparently oil sands production will make up 47% of emissions growth from now until 2010. I can’t remember what company that was but this has some data on oil sands emissions: Report: Carbon-Neutral Oil Sands SCO Possible for an Extra $1.76 to $13.65 a Barrel.

This is interesting, from the report above:

“For as little as US$2.50 per barrel an oil sands company could eliminate 100 per cent of its GHG pollution. To put this in perspective it costs up to US$1.75 per barrel to remove lead from gasoline.

—Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute”