Not to add more fuel to the fire of the debate on the best ways to mitigate one's carbon load (which already seems confusing eough, what with TerraPass and Carbonfund.org all up in eachother's grill and the rapidly-expanding range of options for carbon taxes and carbon credits), but DriveNeutral seems worth checking out. Much like Terrapass, it allows you to mitigate your driving behavior, but instead of buying green energy with the cash, it buys and retires carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange, creating (at least in theory) more incentives for industry to find more climate-friendly approaches and technologies.

Let the emitter beware -- we don't vouch for any particular approach here -- but I think that this carbon-neutral mania is all for the good. Indeed, as I've threatened before, I'm thinking about going personally carbon-balanced (if not climate-flat), balanced being such a nicer term than neutral.
(via Nick Aster)

I don't know... "carbon-balanced" sounds like something you'd get to be after eating the right kinds of breakfast bars.

Posted by: Jamais Cascio on October 5, 2005 10:18 AM

And then there's a bunch of other climate-neutral driving services, as I blogged some months back: http://makower.typepad.com/joel_makower/2005/06/climate_neutral.html

Posted by: Joel Makower on October 5, 2005 1:44 PM

I keep thinking they should sell those in supermarkets (& pt of sale at fuel stations & airport lounges), ie pick up a CO2 certificate while yr waiting at the checkout. You can buy a kilo or a few kgs of "Help" here - just a leaflet thing with barcode & the $$ goes to charity. Is that widespread?

Posted by: Sturt's Desert Pea on October 5, 2005 2:10 PM

The list of carbon offset retailers grows. I see a couple of potential problems with this model. First, purchasing an offset may sufficiently assuage one's guilt, pre-empting more meaningful lifestyle changes. If I can buy an offset for my Hummer, I'll feel ok about continuing to drive it.

Second, not all offset investment projects are the same--and many are of dubious quality. I've found that www.offsetters.com focuses on the quality of their offset investments. Perhaps some of the others do as well...

Posted by: Dave on October 9, 2005 1:38 AM