Now the Super Bowl is trying to go green by planing trees to help offest greenhouse gas emissions from the game. How many trees would they really have to plant to offset all the emissions from those taking trains, planes and automobiles to the game?
~A
Daily Herald | NFL planting trees prior to Super Bowl
PHOENIX — The NFL is planting thousands of trees in Arizona forests blackened by wildfires to help offset greenhouse gas emissions from the Super Bowl, to be played in Glendale Feb. 3.
The league also will power University of Phoenix Stadium and the adjacent NFL theme park with clean energy sources from New Mexico wind turbines to California geothermal plants.
The reforestation effort will offset the 350 tons of greenhouse gas produced by the NFL’s 3,000-vehicle ground-transportation fleet.
The league computed its carbon footprint with help from Princeton University researchers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service.
But the carbon footprint calculations did not include air travel by NFL staff, teams and the thousands of fans who will fly or drive into the Phoenix area during Super Bowl week.
Filed under: eco-friendly, environment, trends
Alcone Marketing Group - Consumer Lab 
You raise a good and important question. Our original GHG inventory only included certain sources and we think it needs to be expanded to include more of the travel impact. It is something that we are working on right now and hope to have a completely new GHG analysis in time to implement projects for 2009 in Tampa.
As far as “how many trees, etc.” that is a tougher issue. There is a great controversy among researchers and environmentalists right now over carbon offsets – what types are valid, how do you verify them, what is the impact of particular methods, etc.
Because of this debate, we have backed away from using hot button terms like carbon neutral and carbon offset. Instead, we are continuing to do whatever we can to “green” our activities without making specific claims.
Again, thanks for raising these questions. We all need to think about them.
Jack Groh
Director
NFL Environmental Program