In honor of Earth Day, our San Francisco office invited our power company (PG&E) to do an energy audit on our operation. Turns out, we're in pretty good shape -- we had already swapped out most of our light bulbs, make good use of natural light, no wasteful appliances, standby modes for computers, printers and copiers.

The big thing we learned was about their "Climate Smart" program, which allows us to purchase carbon offsets for our in-office power consumption, and it costs only $22/month for an operation of our size! We signed up immediately.

But it raised the question: what exactly are we paying for when we buy carbon offsets? You can learn more about it at the Climate Smart site, or get a more elaborate and objective education on the topic at Wikipedia.

This is an important (and controversial) topic that won't be going away anytime soon, so take a little time to educate yourself on it.