I’m a skeptic by nature. So when I first started hearing about carbon offsets, my initial reaction was that they must just be a sugar pill, an empty way to make people feel less guilty about their carbon-intensive lifestyles. But I’m becoming more of a believer, and here’s why. Carbon offsets are a way to counterbalance your carbon emissions by investing in solutions such as wind energy. You purchase the “offset,” and your money goes toward developing new wind farms or preserving rainforest acreage or capturing methane. There are several companies and nonprofits that do this, in varying ways.

Forget the Blues, rising indie-rock star Kelley Stoltz is singing the Greens. With his new, crticially acclaimed record, Below the Branches (Sub Pop ), Stoltz is breaking new ground in the music industry as the first artist to offset the greenhouse gasses emitted during the creation of his album with renewable-energy credits.