In mid-January 2020, Microsoft announced that it would be working toward becoming carbon negative by 2030. I, being the person in our household that intentionally consumes news content, mentioned it to Neil (who actively avoids consuming news content unless it is via The Onion), and he replied, “So, we should go carbon negative by 2030 too?”
I kind of laughed it off and continued with the discussion of what Microsoft was planning to do while I finished washing the dishes, and making dinner, and all those regular tasks. But the idea stuck. And soon so many questions were swirling around my mind. Could we go carbon negative as a family? Is that something that only businesses can really do? How would we even figure that out? What would it look like? Can you be carbon negative and still be a part of mainstream society?
A week or so later, I brought it up to Neil again.
“Remember when we were talking about Microsoft going carbon negative, and you asked if we should do it too? What if we did?”
Neil, no stranger to my sometimes (always) over ambitious plans, said, “Sure.”
Ok, so what next?
Well, what’s next was everything that was 2020 and now into 2021. We’ve really kicked this one off with a bang, aren’t we? Which is largely why I’ve been sitting on sharing this project for the past 12 months. But while we were stuck at home, we also had some opportunity to start making moves.
