{"id":1167,"date":"2007-06-04T16:21:41","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T14:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.greenmedia.md\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2007-06-04T16:21:41","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T14:21:41","slug":"the-green-options-interview-erik-blachford-ceo-of-terrapass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/the-green-options-interview-erik-blachford-ceo-of-terrapass.html","title":{"rendered":"The Green Options Interview: Erik Blachford, CEO of TerraPass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erik Blachford is the new CEO of TerraPass<\/a>, a carbon offset company. When a consumer buys a carbon offset<\/a> to offset the emissions from their driving, a trip, or even a wedding, TerraPass uses that money to fund renewable energy products. <\/p>\n

Erik has never been a full-time environmentalist, although he is member of a few national organizations. In a former life he was the CEO of Expedia<\/a>, although he left the company before its partnership with TerraPass<\/a> was established. Erik is excited about the new venture, explaining on a recent blog post<\/a>, <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBack in Internet pre-history, at the dawn of online travel, nobody knew you could even check airline ticket prices online, much less book tickets. Now almost half of all travel is booked online. I think we\u2019re at the beginning of another explosion in consumer awareness, this time in the voluntary carbon markets.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I spoke with Erik by phone on May 25th.<\/em><\/p>\n

Green Options:<\/strong> How do you respond to carbon offset skeptics? For example, the argument that offsets are just an easy way for people to pay off their pollution without much sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Erik Blachford:<\/strong> I hear that argument a lot, but it\u2019s not accurate as to what TerraPass does. People who buy carbon offsets aren\u2019t just sitting back afterwards and thinking they\u2019ve done their duty. These people are active in other ways, too: they\u2019re very in tuned to the problem and the other solutions. Furthermore, carbon offsets are a voluntary enterprise; no one is forcing someone to buy carbon offsets.<\/p>\n

However, there is also a lot of talk about common umbrella standards for carbon offsets, and I think TerraPass and our customers would be better served with them. Our industry needs consumer protection standards. Right now it\u2019s unregulated, and the consumer has to be very cautious. Consumers are taking the initiative and doing the research on which carbon offset programs are legitimate, but they shouldn\u2019t be expected to do all of the work. <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erik Blachford is the new CEO of TerraPass, a carbon offset company. When a consumer buys a carbon offset to offset the emissions from their driving, a trip, or even a wedding, TerraPass uses that money to fund renewable energy products. Erik has never been a full-time environmentalist, although he is member of a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salvaeco.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}