Late October, 2006.

Camden, Maine, USA. The sleepy fishing village off the coast of the Atlantic awakes to a cool, crisp fall morning. It is the height of autumn; the leaves are just past peak, the fiery reds of the maples are giving way to auburn brown. Nestled into the rugged Maine coastline, the Main Street in Camden is home to quaint shops and seafood restaurants. Just north of downtown the streets are lined with stately mansions, 20th century sea captain homes turned into quintessential New England bed and breakfasts.

Kalale District, Benin, Africa. The air is hot and humid; late October marks the onset of the extended dry season, and months of uncertainty. In Kalale, 95 percent of the people rely on subsistence farming as their primary means of survival, but because they lack access to water for irrigation, they can only farm during the rainy season. With no access to electricity, residents suffer from poor diets, little income and almost no education. Life in Benin is hard, and often short: life expectancy in this western Africa country is just 53 years.

In geography, climate and culture these two villages couldn’t be farther apart. Yet what happened in one village over three days will have lasting consequences for the other. If that sounds like hyperbole, it is not.

This year Pop!Tech partnered with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) and Lexus to offset double the carbon emissions generated as a result of the conference, making Pop!Tech 2006 not just carbon neutral, but "carbon negative". The offsets will help fund SELF’s goal to provide solar electricity to 44 villages in Benin, bringing clean, renewable energy to homes, schools, health care clinics and micro enterprises, improving the quality of life for these residents in fundamental yet profound ways.

Carbon, Cubes and Calculations: How to Create a "Negative" Meeting

As a futurist who knows as much about new math as well, old math (which is to say, very little), the idea of calculating the collective carbon emissions of 530 Pop!Tech attendees was more than a little daunting. Good thing there’s a growing community of folks who not only specialize in this kind of environmental arithmetic, but they actually enjoy it. The GHG Protocol was an invaluable resource, providing not only personal advice and guidance but also online tools which made calculating carbon emissions seem (almost) easy.

Deb Johnson and her team of student volunteers at the Pratt Design Incubator tackled the challenge of "visualizing" the carbon impact for the audience. Using Google maps to determine the mileage from each attendee’s home zip code, they estimated the number of metric tons of carbon each attendee emitted if they flew or drove to Camden. Then, in order to show how "big" a metric ton of carbon would be, they converted that into cubic feet (I’ll spare you the gory details, but let’s just say it involved lots of decimal points); this number was then printed on each name badge. Deb’s team cleverly represented the relatively size of our carbon impact using a variety of cubes, which provided both a great visualization (and a workout for Andrew).

In order to personalize the experience and get the most accurate carbon calculation for the meeting as possible, the design gurus at Pinkergreen Designcreated a "carbon card" which gave attendees the opportunity to add up their personal carbon emissions.

"Pay" it Forward

To make Pop!Tech "carbon negative" we calculated the carbon emissions of all attendees, taking into account the air & vehicle travel for each person as well as the total energy consumed at the Camden Opera House over the three days of the conference: a total of nearly 400 metric tons. Through the generous support of corporate sponsor Lexus, Pop!Tech will purchase double the amount carbon offsets (at a rate of $10 per ton) from SELF, bridging the gap (both literally and metaphorically) between the villages of Kalale and Camden.

Being carbon neutral (or negative) does not provide a free pass to guiltless consumption. However, by creating carbon neutral meetings and events with the help of organizations such as SELF, negative environmental impacts can create positive social effects.

Thank you to the fabulous team who made Pop!Tech’s carbon negative program possible:

Lexus, for its generous financial support; Bob Freling for explaining the difference between tons and tones; Deb Johnson and her team at the Pratt Design Incubator for dozens of hours of creative genius; my colleagues at FringeHog and Pinkergreen Design for designing and donating the carbon cards; and last but not least Beth Cohen, for her patient leadership herding both futurists and designers.