Dude, you're getting offsets!
OK, so perhaps I'm not as funny as the Dell Dude (assuming he was ever funny), but this one strikes me as an idea that only he could love.
I was browsing around Dell's website today, checking out the cost of some new desktop hardware, just for curiosity, more than anything else, when I came upon what I can only describe as the enviro-nut section of the build process.
In the services section of the website (see the image below), you now have the ability to have Dell (for a fee, of course) plant a tree for you to offset the CO2 emissions of your new PC.
They call it "Select my Plant A Tree." I call it, "let's buy into enviro-voodoo."
But hey, I suppose if people want to give Dell an extra $2-4 to make themselves feel better about buying a new PC, who am I to object. Apart from the fact that there are growing concerns that offsets may, in fact, lead to higher emissions of CO2, in part by making people feel less guilty about consuming electricity and burning fossil fuels.
It's probably not enough to stop me buying a Dell...they make good machines, and after all, the "service" is optional.
But it would be nice if there was some corporation in America willing to stand up and say "wait a minute! How about we work from facts here!"
What's especially amusing about this, IMO, is the fact that it's not as though consumers are beating the doors down demanding this, at least not if the turnout and viewership for Live Earth was any indication. Instead, this seems to be yet another example of top-down elitism...our corporate betters trying to tell us how we should live.
Thanks all the same...I'd rather have the Dell without the guilt...or the offsets.