danielbaylis.ca

Dearest readers of The Conversationalist…

It was a dramatic week in the world of social media! If you follow the @daniel_baylis twitter feed, you know that a MAJER hostage taking occurred over the course of three tense days.

At approximately 8 AM on Tuesday morning while I was dillydallying around on my Facebook account, my beard, in an act of explicit defiance, stealthily took control of my Twitter feed and proceeded to spitefully yell obscenities at my faithful followers. It was immediately apparent that, whatever he was up to, he meant business.

His motives were unclear at first. What would a beard what with a twitter account? The bastardly character started tweeting/bellowing things all in CAPS! How annoying is that? The scruffy rebel yelled such things as:

“LONG LIVE BEARDS!”

and

“NEUTRALIZING YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT IS SEXY, BITCHES.”

However, as the hours progressed the motives of this cyber-hostage-taking became clear. Despite being a rather repugnant fella, he was simply demanding that I take responsibility for the heavy total of carbon emissions caused from traveling by airplane this year. I had to take immediate action, both for environmental reasons and for the sake of my social media reputation!

By some cosmic coincidence, it just so happened that my birthday was approaching on Thursday. I decided to ask for only one thing from friends, family and loyal readers – help me clean up the hefty carbon footprint from this year’s air travel.

I immediately got in touch with the folks at Offsetters, one of the world’s leading carbon compensating organizations, to help me out with my situation. Although they had only a little experience with ginger-beard-terrorism, they were able to calculate that my decision to hopscotch across the planet resulted in approximately 21.05 tonnes of CO2 being spewed into the earth’s atmosphere.

“Yuck!” I thought to myself,  “This beard had reason to be pissed off!”

Offsetters gave me two portfolio options. I could support projects in Canada with their ‘General’ portfolio, or I could step it up a notch and opt for the ‘Gold Standard’ portfolio that focuses on international endeavors. I knew that the global Gold Standard option would best reflect the spirit of this journey.

So the numbers were punched/crunched/munched, and the expense to offset 21.05 tonnes of CO2 totaled $631.50. This money would ultimately be used to support green initiatives such as windmill electricity, the planting of trees, cleaner burning stoves, thermal heat pumps and more.

Be still my sustainable-loving heart!

So being the unabashed individual you know (and have grown to graciously tolerate), I started to invite y’all to share a bit of birthday lovin’/content-appreciation-reciprocity-action. And in 24 hours you, the readers of The Conversationalist, dug deep into change purses and piggy banks, and generously gave a hefty total of $605! That’s awesome!

But wait.

You might be thinking, “I’m no mathamagican, Daniel, but you didn’t actually reach your goal! That beard must still be haunting your twitter account!”

And I would respond, “Darn it! I can’t slip anything past you!”

But the story doesn’t end here, my friends.

Offsetters dug the fundraising efforts/display of reader generosity, and by happenstance were empathetic to my situation – a ginger goatee once kidnapped the CEO’s poodle! They offered to get in on the action, and jumped on board to sponsor the final leg of the journey.

That brought the final total to:

$605 reader funds + $42.60 Offsetters sponsorship

=

$647.50 for dropkicking carbon!

This total surpassed the target amount! But, heck, I could always use a bit of extra credit towards a couple of Moroccan mini-bus excusions, some Indian train rides and/or even a lovely little motorcycle adventure!

So what does this mean?

COMPENSATING ACHIEVED! Y’ALL HAVE OFFSET 21.05 TONNES OF CARBON DIOXIDE!

You have helped me successfully sweep up the mess that I have made, while enabling me to retake control of my twitter account! When the beard found out that the offsetting total was triumphantly achieved, he handed back my twitter account. It turns out that he was a beard-of-his-word.

In the end, I suppose the furry guy was not such a bad character. His strategy was intimidating and perhaps controversial, but his motives were pure – to take responsibility for the mess that I made.

And isn’t that a lesson for us all?

Thanks for helping me out back there.

Cheers,

Daniel

*

I send gargantuan gratitudes to the following readers who gave generously:

Jennifer Allan
Rosemary Reilly
Jamie Taylor
Jeanine Davis
Thomas Bottom
Gus Katsiapis
Cheryl Sparks
Dora Yoo
Kimm Renaud
Elie Chivi
Ashley Diener
Gracie & Benjamin Wegwitz
Julie Butterworth
Sharon Daniel
Terry Kyle
Reg Baylis
Mary Ann Thomas
Kathryn Maytham
Koji Komatsu
Jose Chacon

Also to all of you who tweeted at my beard, I salute you!

And, finally, to Offsetters for participating in this campaign for environmental sustainably and anti-beard-terrorism! (I encourage you to visit their site to find out more about offsetting your carbon emissions! They do great work!)

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