This fundraiser managed to get 100,000 trees in the ground in 2019. In 2020 things are far worse, so we’re going bigger. I have started a reforestation charity called Protect Earth, please donate anything you can to avoid climate oblivion. We can’t cycle under water, and being on fire will mess with your FTP.

Do you know what your carbon footprint is? Living on a bike and riding around the place without a car you’d think your carbon footprint was pretty low, but I did some math and mine is still awful. The average American pumps 50,000 lb of CO2 into the air annually, which is about 4,100 a month, and about 140 lb a day. In contrast, bike tour life creates 40 lb a day from hotels and 15 lb a day from meals (source), which is about 1,650 lb a month.

By camping on the weekends I can get down from 1,650 to 1,250 a month. Doing all of this only gets me down to 1/4th of the average person. Avoiding CO2 is hard, and everyone needs to do what they can. Calculating your footprint is a good start, reducing how much you output is good, but we all need to offset the rest (and more).

Too many people hope science is gonna fix it for us. Billionaires and scientists are scaling up carbon trapping programs with big old turbines, even looking at turning that byproduct into fuel, but that wont be enough. We need to reforest an area the size of the USA as quickly as possible. Why the urgency? Ice shelves in Greenland are melting so fast that 197 billion tons melted in July alone, and abnormally vicious heatwaves all over Europe are becoming more intense and more frequent. We’re rapidly reaching a point where large areas of the planet will be too hot to plant forests, so we need to get it done now.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz-LSqOlujO/

The UK was down to about 6% woodland not so long ago. Right now we’re at 13% which isn’t great either, but there are projects on the go. France is 31% which is somewhat ok for a developed country, and Finland is straight crushing it with 71%. Good job Finland, but so many developing countries could do with extra help!

Ecologi are a donation platform that help raise funds for Eden Reforestation Projects. This charity is amazing, they are working to help reforest Nepal, Madagascar, Haiti, Indonesia, and Mozambique, employing local people who are motivated and connected to the success of the project.

Sponsor me, to keep on cycling around, sharing stupid stories, fighting the mosquitos, trying to keep the footprint as low as possible. I’m saving some money by camping out in the woods, so lets throw that back into more trees, which means I’ll throw in $1 for every $5 you donate.

Trees soak up some of the CO2 we’re constantly pumping out, help retain water, stop soil erosion, on islands they can help reduce the impact of tidal waves, and along roads they can stop cyclists getting blasted full pelt in the face with 25mph headwinds for an entire week straight.

Even if you’re fine with living in a barren world with vanishing fertile soil causing rapidly creeping desertification interspersed with mass flooding from a busted water cycle, and rapid cycle of destroying whatever woodland has not already arbitrarily caught on fire in order to make more farmland, think about how much better it is riding through woods than open fields.

Start donating now. I strongly urge you to sign up for their monthly subscription too. Ditch your Amazon Prime account (they’re monsters) and with the money you save you can offset a decent chunk of your carbon footprint.

Donate Now

August 2019

This month all donations are going through Ecologi, so your name will show up there instead of here. Unless you subscribe too! 😉 The Laravel community are also rocking their own mini fundraiser to help out. Gotta love those folks.

  • Ecologi Donations - 19,250
  • Laravel Community - 8,027
  • Gary Hockin - 180 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Jordan Kasper - 100 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Marc Qualie - 180 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Heidi Hansen - 180 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Phil Meeee - 48 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Nico Silvani - 120 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Markus Hausammann - 36 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Future Commerce - 36 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Philip Jackson - 48 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Matthew Reinbold - 48 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Kieran Patel - 12 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Simon Maddox - 48 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Marc-Andre Giroux - 48 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Dan Sullivan - 12 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Jeff Loiselle - 50 + 48 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Edd Stone - 12 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Mike Bifulco - 12 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Sean Hamill - 24 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Matthew Haines-Young - 13 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Dom Harrington - 24 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Nick Jackson - 12 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Ahmed H - 18 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Lukas Rosenstock - 15 (subscriber 🏅)
  • Total 28,738
  • Goal 65,000
  • Remaining 36,262

July 2019

June 2019