For ourselves and our guests, we strive to normalize the consideration of one's carbon footprint and the regular inclusion of carbon offsets.
The most basic component of traveling is getting from place to place - planes, trains, boats, and cars all allow us to explore destinations around the world. Covering great distances is not without an environmental cost, however. Transportation, jet travel in particular, is tourism’s main source of greenhouse gas emissions. Purchasing carbon offsets, or supporting carbon reduction activities, is a way to compensate for these emissions.
To help effect carbon reduction as locally as possible and provide a carbon offset opportunity for our guests, we have partnered with the Fairbanks Carbon Reduction Fund. We include an optional donation to the cost of each guest reservation that gets passed on to the fund. The fund partners with another Fairbanks organization, Interior Weatherization, to provide home weatherization for low-income homeowners in Fairbanks, our closest city. Weatherization makes home heating more efficient, more affordable and reduces particulate emissions in the Fairbanks community.
For domestic travelers coming to Camp Denali we recommended a $20 per person donation, and for those traveling internationally, $40 per person. This amount focuses on the single largest factor of a traveler’s carbon footprint– jet travel– and reflects an approximate market rate for carbon offset of $10/ton.
A donation even this modest has a tangible benefit in our neighboring city of Fairbanks in terms of air quality and carbon reduction. Additionally, we hope it prompts our guests to consider their carbon footprint and inspires them to normalize the inclusion of carbon offsets in their lives.
At the end of each summer Camp Denali will match each guest contribution to the Fairbanks Carbon Reduction Fund up to $2000. Last year, Camp Denali, together with our guests, contributed just over $4000 to the Fund. Our company also sponsors a carbon offset for each of our 30 summer staff members for their travel to and within Alaska.
What opportunities to offset your carbon footprint exist in your home communities and neighborhoods?
The Fairbanks Carbon Reduction Fund was created with volunteer leadership from members of the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition (FCAC). Recognizing the importance of decarbonization in building a regenerative and renewably powered future, working group members created the fund's online platform to provide educational resources and ways to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Interior Alaska communities.
The Fund strives not only to generate donations for weatherization and energy efficiency upgrades for low-income homes, it also supports education and action to address the root causes of climate change.
The Renewable Energy Working Group is one of five working groups of FCAC that collectively work to elevate equitable climate solutions through grassroots community organizing. Other work of the Coalition revolves around education and advocacy for climate action. FCAC follows the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing and prioritizes values of community, justice, democracy, and Indigenous leadership into their work.
FCAC 's fiscal sponsor is Native Movement. With offices in Alaska's largest urban areas, Fairbanks and Anchorage, Native Movement prioritizes social justice and healing in their movement-building work to develop leadership for community organizing. Guided by a Just Transition framework for Indigenous leadership, Native Movement promotes advocacy and action focused on climate justice, environmental justice and food sovereignty, gender justice and healing.
