WIC recently received (August 27, 2019) a Carbone Boréal certificate from UQAC in recognition of its efforts to become carbon neutral. Originally spearheaded by Mr. Marsolais to embark on a legitimate initiative that provides carbon compensation credits to offset his personal emissions and become carbon neutral, WIC and the administration team has committed to do the same for its international trips since 2018. Mr. Fequet is now internalizing part or all of the carbon footprint of WIC’s student flight into the price of the trips. Furthermore, Mrs. Lauzière and Mr. Lisogurski decided that the Coffee House benefits of last year’s performance would also go into carbon compensation for the school. Carbone Boréal qualifies as a very legitimate initiative to create and provide carbon credits on the voluntary market. They respect strict norms, such as planting trees in areas deemed as “non-forest” (which means that without human intervention, no trees would grow there naturally), planting in double in distant areas to secure redundancy in case of a natural disaster and they monitor planted trees in the long term to assure that the carbon absorbed will not be released (sustainable long term forest management). They also work on permanent carbon sequestration research. According to Mr. Marsolais, “Carbon compensation and buying carbon credits are a good thing, but one has to understand that it cannot serve as a tool to buy our way out of climate actions. While planting trees and buying carbon credit is “better than nothing”, carbon compensation credits work hand in hand with efforts to reduce our carbon footprint!”
