VW of America to Pay Carbon Offsets for Fall Models
"Wow, I can actually feel better about my carbon footprint!" So proclaimeth an unknown supporter on Carbonfund.org's website. According to Environmentalleader.com, VW's down with that. The environmental campaigners report that the German automaker will supply the "fund" in Carbonfund's plan to buy and reforest 1,100 acres of the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, Louisiana. In case you're wondering how they do the math, "the offsets will be based on the average annual emissions for each different type of model sold in the four-month period." It's not an open-ended deal; VW will cover carbon emissions for vehicles sold from September 1, 2007 until January 2, 2008. But the company invites new owners to keep paying for their guilt environmental impact by continuing the offset arrangement into the new year. In fact, VeeDub's putting a "carbon calculator" on an official micro site hosted by… Carbonfund.org.
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whitenose: "Something I’m wondering, though, is why is it necessary to inject Hillary and Al Gore into topics only vaguely (or not at all) related to them?" In this case it is related to Mr. Gore. After all, not only did he invent the internet, but he discovered global warming. ;^) But seriously, he is a rather huge proponent of carbon offsets and does in fact own part of one of the companies that does that sort of thing.
Max: so? There are a lot of proponents of carbon offsets. I don't see their name dragged into every offset-related discussion in the blogosphere. And NickNick: don't think that the only public cost of driving is physical infrastructure. How about the licensing bodies, police departments (enforcement, accident investigation, etc.), first-responders such as fire departments, ambulance services, medevacs. Not too mention the harder-to-quantify costs such as environmental degredation, the impact on public health of air polution and smog, the cost of using military to secure foreign sources of oil, the cost of pandering to "friendlier" sources of oil. The fact is, the externalized costs of consuming gasoline is largely paid from general revenues. So why not have gas taxes flow into the same place? The problem, however, is that other taxes should be cut to keep additional gas taxes revenue-neutral. Unfortunately, government has never met a tax they liked to cut, so we just get hosed.
"Someday, future generations will dig up a story like this and wonder what the hell we were thinking." Thinking? They will discover that government control of education, broadcasting, foodstuffs, medicine created a nation of insane and childish chumps.
dean : August 30th, 2007 at 6:37 pm "The fact is, the externalized costs of consuming gasoline is largely paid from general revenues. So why not have gas taxes flow into the same place?" I'm fine with that as long as you then eliminate the taxes feeding the general revenue that is feeding these externalized costs. ADDING a gasoline tax just as a punitive measure is wrong wrong wrong.