Lesley Marcus Carlson.

With what environmental organization are you affiliated?

I am the president of Carbonfund.org.

What does your organization do?

Very simply, we make it easy and affordable for individuals or businesses to reduce their climate footprints to zero. We help people understand their impact on the climate and mitigate it by supporting energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other carbon-offset projects.

Because we are a nonprofit organization, offsetting your climate footprint through Carbonfund is also tax deductible. And at a cost of just $5.50 to offset a ton of carbon dioxide — the average person is responsible for about 10 tons a year — our prices are the lowest, by far, of any group doing what we do. Also, because we want you to reduce your footprint each year, we give energy-saving recommendations. Our hope is that each year your donation to Carbonfund will decrease as you emit less and less. Can a for-profit company say that?

What long and winding road led you to your current position?

My husband Eric is the original environmentalist in the family. His background is in energy efficiency and climate change, while mine is in public policy and democracy building. We both worked in Washington, D.C., for many years before being sent overseas to work for nonprofits in central and Eastern Europe for six years. I worked to improve civic participation in government, and Eric developed energy-efficiency and climate-change strategies, policies, and projects.

While overseas, we both saw firsthand the environmental destruction caused by years of abuse, authoritarianism, and just bad policies. We saw the science of climate change become more accurate and the effects become more apparent through higher temperatures, more severe storms, and the melting of the Antarctic ice shelf. We also saw the global community adopt Kyoto while the U.S., the world’s largest emitter by far, rejected it. And the birth of our two daughters prompted us to really do something about it.

We thought, how do you solve the problem of climate change, how do you get beyond small incremental changes — as this train is speeding toward us — to zero climate-change impact? And Carbonfund just seemed the most direct path to reducing climate change.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?

Born in Kenmore, N.Y., just outside Buffalo, and I now live in Silver Spring, Md.

What environmental offense has infuriated you the most?

It astonishes me that in its first energy bill in years Congress has done relatively little to promote energy efficiency or renewable energy, and nothing for fuel efficiency.

Who is your environmental hero?

Amory Lovins — he has a knack for finding the value proposition in his ideas, squeezing out the costs and profits so they are both environmentally and financially profitable. He understands the world we live in.

Who is your environmental nightmare?

The oil industry. Don’t these people live in communities? Have kids? Want to pass on a better life to them? Care about the world? I have no patience for people who purposely obscure facts for their own profit. I have no issue with profit; I have a huge issue with profit at the expense of honesty, the planet, my children, and our common future.

What’s your environmental vice?

I raised my daughters in disposable diapers.

What are you reading these days?

Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety.

What’s your favorite meal?

Sarma, the Serbian version of stuffed cabbage, hands down. A friend used to make it for me and even brought some to the hospital for me when I had my baby.

What’s one thing the environmental movement is doing badly, and how could it be done better?

We are not getting the message of the enormity and interconnectedness of the climate problem out to a larger audience. We need to illustrate that severe hurricanes like Katrina, wildfires, ecosystem depletion, increased temperatures, and the melting of Greenland are all connected ecological events.

The other thing we are not doing well is showing how easy some of the solutions are. Is it really that difficult to imagine a world where 80 percent of new homes have a cost-effective solar hot-water heater? And couldn’t each family somehow survive with one car that gets 35 to 45 mpg? How about a two-cents-a-gallon gas tax to increase our energy efficiency and renewable budgets sixfold? Gas prices went up by a dollar a gallon over the last year — is two cents really going to dismantle the U.S. economy? C’mon.

If you could institute by fiat one environmental reform, what would it be?

A cap on CO2 emissions and a gradual but real reduction.

What was your favorite band when you were 18? How about now?

That was 1985, so I was listening to the Eurythmics, old Police, and Genesis. I was also really into the song “Walking on Sunshine.” Now I listen to 440 (from the Dominican Republic) and Marshall Crenshaw to get me jazzed.

What’s your favorite TV show? Movie?

TV: The Vicar of Dibley, an old BBC show now in repeats. Will & Grace is my favorite current show. Movie: The Natural.

What are you happy about right now?

My little girls (ages 2 and 4) are best friends.

If you could have every InterActivist reader do one thing, what would it be?

Is it too shameless to ask everyone to reduce their climate footprint with Carbonfund? If so, please give money to the American Cancer Society.

Best Footprint Forward

Lesley Marcus Carlson, cofounder of Carbonfund.

After reading the Carbonfund website, I feel an odd mixture of inspiration and disbelief. Can we possibly plant enough trees and capture enough methane from landfills to stabilize earth’s climate? Can I really bring my carbon footprint down just by sending $30 to Carbonfund, and then continue my American lifestyle — driving a car and jetting across the country?    — Karen Litfin, Seattle, Wash.

Yes. Carbonfund makes it easy and affordable to reduce your climate footprint to zero, or even go beyond zero. Put it this way: if everyone offset their carbon footprint, we would eliminate climate change (over time, we are already on the hook for some change).

If you emit 10 tons of CO2 a year, you can offset 10 tons a year, and that takes you way beyond the goals of Kyoto (6 percent below 1990 levels). While we can only plant so many trees and capture so much methane, the energy efficiency and renewable energy options are limitless. Also, the more we invest in these technologies, the lower the price will become. If we can get wind or another renewable energy to the same cost as coal and gas, it will skyrocket and become the default technology. Carbonfund supporters are helping us all get there.

I don’t get it. How can buying somebody else’s good practices offset the damage I do? This sounds like accounting sleight of hand to me.    — Cindi deCapiteau, Heathsville, Va.

Not at all. First of all, you are supporting the “good practices” and reducing CO2 — you’re just doing it in a different location and for much less money than doing it yourself, because we can “offset in bulk.”

You can wash away these footprints.

Think of it this way: your donation to the American Red Cross is a more efficient way to help the Katrina victims than going there yourself and setting up a donation site. Similarly, Carbonfund is an efficient and practical way to reduce your carbon footprint. It would not be practical or cost-effective for everyone to purchase a small windmill, but I hope one day we all get our electricity from wind or another renewable energy source.

Do you have any major companies working with Carbonfund right now to offset their emissions?    — Name not provided

Working Assets, the socially responsible telephone and credit-card company, is encouraging its customers and noncustomers to offset their climate footprints. Working Assets is matching five tons of carbon offsets free for every person who goes Zero Carbon. It is a great third-party endorsement for Carbonfund.

We are also working with a few companies who want to donate carbon offsets they have already purchased for their environmental programs. We will ensure the carbon offsets are permanently retired, and the companies will get a tax deduction for the donation.

Of the people who donate to Carbonfund, do you have a sense of how many are one-time donors and how many actually do offset their emissions annually?    — Name not provided

A lot of people donate on a recurring basis, with about half of those recurring annually and half monthly. Recurring donations are a good way to spread out the cost. For just $4.58 a month, you can offset your home, car, and air-travel footprints.

What kind of outreach do you do? How do you get your message out?    — Name not provided

Our outreach is growing but definitely needs some help. Grist has been wonderful, as has Working Assets, Environmental Defense, and some good news stories in the press. But we could always use help. Any marketing experts or journalists out there? If you want to help, please email us at .

How do you choose which renewable energy projects to invest in?    — Brad Nahill, Washington, D.C.

We’ve been pretty selective so far. Credibility and verification is everything for us and the carbon-offset market right now. We must be able to verify the reductions are real with a solid third-party source. We had to turn down a project in Brazil a couple months ago that we really wanted to support because we could not get the verification we feel we owe our supporters.

How much, if any, do you feel the recent record gas prices will affect the production and consumption of more fuel-efficient vehicles?    — Todd Snider, Ellensburg, Wash.

I think that gas prices have to be high for a while before they impact the cars people buy. Only a small fraction of people buy a car each month, and those people, unless they are inclined to buy efficient cars from the outset, will only buy a hybrid if they think prices will remain high for a good part of the time they are going to own the car.

How is your organization able to survive when you are offering the lowest price for an offset?    — Name not provided

I would ask, why do others charge so much? We are able to cover our costs and offset a lot of CO2 from different types of high-quality projects for just $5.50 per ton.

We created Carbonfund to reduce climate change and to do that, we need to make it easy and affordable for a mass audience to reduce their carbon footprint to zero. The way to reach a large audience is to keep costs down. I doubt we’ll get much venture capital for our business model, but it makes sense to us.

Sarma sounds delicious and just right for the wintry months up ahead. Can you provide a good recipe?    — Dror Etzion, Barcelona, Spain

I need to dig it out of a moving box. Come to our site in a couple of weeks, and I’ll put it up. It is a great winter meal.