A new online carbon calculator helps people easily calculate how much they are adding to global greenhouse gases. The CI carbon calculator offers a way to offset those emissions by helping protect tropical forests from being burned and cleared.

Tropical deforestation emits at least 20 percent of total greenhouse gases that cause climate change — more than all the world’s cars, SUVs, trucks, trains and airplanes combined. The calculator determines personal or family carbon emissions from home energy, vehicle, travel and diet behaviors, or from an individual event or travel.

“Most people don’t realize that the meat and food items they eat, the soaps and shampoos they use, even some of the biodiesel and ethanol biofuels powering their cars come from cleared tropical forests,” said Michael Totten, CI’s Chief Adviser for Climate, Water and Ecosystem Services.

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