Here’s a neat idea for reducing pollution, a nice little mix of environmental idealism and capitalist realism (plus a dash of liberal guilt). There’s a non-profit group in San Francisco called Drive Neutral, which will buy carbon pollution credits for you on the Chicago Commodity Exchange if you give them a relatively small donation. These pollution credits, once purchased, legally require some industry somewhere in the USA to reduce it’s carbon emissions into the atmosphere (i.e., carbon dioxide pollution, which causes global warming). The industry could be a utility company or a manufacturer or an agricultural company; they can invest in better technology or change their operations to pollute less.

The idea is that you purchase enough carbon emission reductions via Drive Neutral to offset the pollution that you create by driving your car for one year (you can’t buy them directly). Drive Neutral has a little calculator on their web site to help you figure out just how much global warming pollution you created in the past year, and how much it will cost to offset that pollution via the credit purchase system. I just did it, and my fee for 2005 was $17.50. They take credit cards, so I ponied up the money.

Yea, this is just a drop in the bucket, but it is real. Here’s an article about it from the Christian Science Monitor. Unfortunately, most people who participate in Drive Neutral probably drive relatively small cars anyway (or are on the cutting-edge with hybrids). Now, if only we could shame the owners of Suburbans and Hummers and Excursions into doing this!

Drive Neutral is at www.driveneutral.org.