The TerraPass Farce
When I initially heard about TerraPass, I was excited.
Your car puts several tons of CO2 in the air every year.
With TerraPass, you can take it back out.
Now, I’m not terribly concerned about CO2 emissions. Heck, considering that the earth is exiting an ice age, “global thawing” might be a better term than “global warming.” But that doesn’t mean that I’m opposed to emissions reduction. Who knows… maybe the crazy global warming theorists will turn out to be right. At any rate, it seemed like TerraPass was offering to neutralize your car’s CO2 emissions, which would make every car a “green” car. Pretty cool, right?
I immediately started wondering how they did it. If you release CO2 gas deep in the ocean, it will dissolve. Were there other ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere?
Well, get ready for a letdown. TerraPass doesn’t actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere. They fund alternative energy research, so that other people don’t put more CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t mean that your emissions have been negated. Let me make an analogy that Al Gore would love: it’s like killing a person, and then convincing a murderer to kill one less person. You didn’t negate your murder. You still killed the person. Convincing someone else to reduce their emissions doesn’t make up for your emissions.
You know what TerraPass is? It’s a way for liberals to feel good about driving around in their SUVs. For a small yearly fee, they get to ignore the fact that as much as they claim to care about the environment, they still drive a vehicle that gets under 30 miles per gallon.
I have a better idea. Buy a car that produces less CO2. Better yet… ride a bicycle. But don’t you dare think that by sporting a sticker on your SUV you are suddenly less of a hypocrite. No, you’re just advertising your hypocrisy.
