I had an impulse spending moment today. Well, really I just got around to finally doing something about offsetting my car’s carbon emissions which had been on the to do list for a while. It’s kinda amazing how fast I went from deciding to do this to actually moving the cash. I did a quick google search for “carbon offset car” and of course came across TerraPass, which I had known before but had forgotten about. Then I remembered that my roadside assistance company, BetterWorldClub, might offer this too. BetterWorld has a carbon calculator, and they seem to have some kind of partnership with DriveNeutral, which redirects to LiveNeutral, but then I found a dead link on LiveNeutral’s site and got scared, so I bailed on BetterWorldClub right after using their carbon calculator so I could compare their pricing with TerraPass (out of curiosity).
Anyway, I was about to entire my CC info for TerraPass and spend the $56 when I had (what I think is) a brilliant idea. I was like: “yo mah, i could do some reactive spending on remediation programs (I know, a rough oversimplification of carbon offsetting), or I could move some ched toward an org that’s promoting lifestyle and infrastructure change for a cleaner world.” I thought this was a more proactive approach, which felt like a better “investment” in a change movement vs a redirection of capital into intermediary solutions. Shabaam!! I turned the damn car around just there and scraped my way through the information superhighway to the East Bay Bicycle Coalition website and paid for a half-century of membership, which cost $50 – just about the same cost for a year’s worth of offsetting with TP.
Upon reflection a couple hours later, I should have just wrote EBBC a check and snail mailed so I could save them the credit card processing fee. Darnnit. Gotta remember that for la proxima vez.
This entry was written by , posted on October 5, 2009 at 5:18 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
I am sure it had a huge impact for the EBBC. They are strapped, as it is.
Also, and conversely, the credit card processing fee could be viewed as an offset to the energy that went into making a check and mailing supplies, and the fuel to deliver it (and all the associated waste generated).
Can you tell I am a paperless advocate? ^_^