The Seattle Times ran an article today about carbon offset programs, such as TerraPass, that I've blogged about. The gist of the article was that this is a fledgling industry with companies that are doing well and others that may not be figuring out how to get the money into real carbon offset. Some, including TerraPass, are willing to be audited and are doing a good job of trying to make a real difference. For others, success is not so clear. So I guess the bottom line to that is to be careful about where you invest your money. That's about the same as any charitable organization...its always a bit useful to do some homework. I like the idea. Philosophically, carbon offsets (buying an investment in clean energy to make up for your carbon emissions) make sense. They are no excuse for not changing our own carbon emissions profile. The current bottom line to mitigation in the climate change game is reducing carbon, so offsets are not bright when your plan is to just keep on consuming at our regular rates and offsetting for guilt reduction. But they make good sense as a way to help mitigate those things we can't help or change.

Top of the AOL news today, Countries Ranked on Climate Change Efforts
By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, AP. We're way down at the bottom of the list. We should be leading, and we're lagging. Shame on us.