In 40-years of flying balloons, burning propane, Chris Dewhirst has delivered 1.5 million kg of CO₂ into the atmosphere, which is a huge carbon footprint. To make amends for his contribution to global warming, Dewhirst has written Everest, Guns & Money – a dangerously revealing memoir and page-turning political thriller – where all the profit from book sales is directed to ReForest Now: a not-for-profit organisation that finds the land, cultivates the seedlings, plants young trees, and regrows our future. 

Time has run out to avoid dangerous climate change by reducing emissions alone. Storing carbon away from the atmosphere is essential: which are the opening sentences from Reduce, Remove and Store, a report on carbon sequestration by the Australian federal government’s Climate Change Authority in April, 2023.

The only pathway known to science that has the immediate capacity to remove greenhouse gases (CO₂) from the atmosphere at scale is photosynthesis: the mechanism by which plants use light, CO₂ and water to create energy: quoting from Professor Ian Chubb’s independent review of Australia’s carbon credit units.

For Commercial Balloon Operators:

A 20-passenger, one-hour balloon flight burns 400 litres of propane, creating 600 kg of CO₂ – or 30 kg per passenger.

The average Australian hot air balloon company carries between 5,000 and 15,000 passengers a year, while generating 200,000 to 500,000 kg of CO₂ from burning propane. It takes 6 to 10 years for 300 newly planted trees to remove 200,000 kg of carbon from the atmosphere. However, after 10 years, the trees start generating auditable carbon credits. It’s simply good business for balloon companies to offset carbon by planting trees. Our passengers are demanding it, and legislation is coming for all companies, regardless.

A single tree converts 2,000 kg of atmospheric carbon dioxide into oxygen and stores 8,000 kg of carbon over its lifetime. Planting trees daily, in Australia, in the tens of thousands, will help mitigate Global Warming. According to ReForest Now it costs $5.60 to plant a tree, which is the most efficient and cleanest method of capturing atmospheric carbon.

Paying ReForest Now directly is the most efficient way for balloon companies to clean carbon from the atmosphere. ReForest Now operates with less than 10% administration overheads, and it leads the industry in sapling survival rates.

We can install solar panels on our hangars, electrify our vehicles, and recycle waste, but flying hot air balloons means that we will be burning propane into the foreseeable future.

If ReForest Now, is not for you, then find a like-minded, not for profit, company, with minimal overheads and a great tree survival rate.

However, whatever else you do, plant a couple of trees for every flight.

Just do it.

CEO UPDATE: 12th May 2023

We’ve reached a long stretch of smooth sailing after the challenge of operating through a series of droughts, fires, covid, and floods between 2019 and 2022. Thankfully, in late ’22 we received good news with tax deductibility now active for our donors.

Tree planting progress from August ’22 to June ’23 was rapid. We planted 300 000 more trees, bringing the total to 598 000 over 4 years. Our team has increased the diversity of planted trees to their highest with 187 species at our giant project Banyula – in Clunes, NNSW.

We have continued to expand steadily to 50 staff which allows us to work simultaneously in bush regeneration, maintenance, seed collection, nursery, and planting. In addition, we still keep a small admin team that accounts for 7-10% of all rostered hours. We remain focused on blue-collar outcomes and high-quality reporting to our supporters.

Maximo Bottaro 
CEO of ReForest Now

Balloon Operators in the USA, Europe and the UK could support: onetreeplanted.org