I’m just back from a trip to the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference in Portland, Oregon. On the way my partner and I stopped off for a few days chez Maria in LA (and a very good time we had too). But all this scholarship, tourism and partying comes at a price, of course. I’ve flown a very long way indeed (and I know many of my fellow bloggers also clock up extensive miles). So what to do about all that carbon I’ve just burnt? One option would be to pay into a carbon offsetting scheme, but I’ve become convinced that many of them are either not very good, or are simply scams. There may be some good ones (commenters please …) but I’m sure I can’t tell which are worth supporting. So here’s another idea: I could just buy energy saving light bulbs and give them away to friends, students, neighbours, thereby generating sufficient carbon savings to purge my sin. But how many (at what rating) would I have to buy and give away per hundred or thousand airmiles?