Why & How We're Going Carbon Neutral

I’ve been privileged and lucky enough to spend my life traveling to some of the wildest, most rugged, and least-visited places on the planet. These places have nurtured me and supported me and helped me grow. And for the last decade I’ve had the blessing of being able to share those places with others for my living.

But there’s always been a disconnect. There’s been a disconnect between loving wild places but knowing that by visiting them I’m harming their homeostasis. I’ve put way more than my fair share of carbon into the atmosphere. After a month of backpacking I often laugh and revel in the fact that it only takes 3 hours of driving to get back to the trailhead where we started. Combustion engines are awesome!!! And treacherous. On IAG trips guests often take a car to a jet plane to another car to a bush plane to another bush plane just to walk 30 miles. It’s a bit hard to swallow when I think of it.

And while the true brunt of climate change responsibility is undoubtedly in the hands of large corporations, and while the narrative of personal responsibility seems merely a scape goat while carbon-loving corporations sit by twiddling their thumbs, I still believe in personal accountability and action.

There really isn’t a perfect solution out there for carbon neutral wilderness trips like the ones we offer. In earnest, if you really want to minimize your carbon footprint, maybe bike to your nearest wilderness area and go walking.

But life is short and I still want to spend my days sharing Alaska and other wild places with good company. I’ve made some peace with it.

The problem with achieving carbon neutrality with carbon off-sets is that it’s not really clear if it works — and it’s definitely a band-aid on a flesh wound. To me, it tastes similar to recycling — “oh, I'll use tons of plastic, cause I can just recycle after all.” And even if it does work we’re not very far along. Carbon credits alone aren’t going to halt climate change. The 98.4 million tons of carbon offset by the entire voluntary carbon market in 2018 accounted for less than one-quarter of one percent of total global emissions that year.

But ya know what — we’re going for it anyways, because there’s no perfect solution. And the imperfect is better than sitting on our laurels. Starting with our Denali Whale’s Tail trip in July 2022 we’ll be neutralizing all the carbon emissions from all our multi-day trips. We’ll be using Project Wren to do this. We’re excited. And we’re going to keep searching for more meaningful actions.

So know that any trip you join come July will be a carbon neutral one.

Sort of.

With Love and Care and Hope for Change,

Jack Bynum