The American Spectator

Be all that as it may, having read through the “Offset the Rest” page you come to the button to “Purchase your offset now.”

The next page offers you various levels of donation — not purchase, mind you, this is pure donation, though it does buy you a clean, green conscience — ranging from the still-rankling minimum of $99 to the princely sum of $1,099 — and then, for students, $25. (So that’s what they do with the excess merits from the works of supererogation by all those saints who offset more CO2 than they emit!) You even have the opportunity to make this a recurring donation every year, quarter, or month. Then you can choose the types of offsets you want to buy — renewable energy, energy efficiency, or reforestation. Finally, you fill in your personal details, and give ECI your credit card information.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, I didn’t pony up the money. So when I clicked “Cancel” instead, a page came up that told me “There was an error processing your step 2 payment. This step has not yet been completed.” Oh yes, it has!

One last concern: Where’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on ECI’s moneymaking site? Or the Better Business Bureau logo? Or the link to information about how the Securities and Exchange Commission regulates the carbon offsets and carbon trading businesses to make sure there’s no monkey business going on? They’re not there, because — well, because there is no regulation of this business. Apparently the ECI has finally found a tiny bit of the free market that it doesn’t want to strangle with regulation. One wonders, though, what happened to the ECI’s strong suspicion of sin in every branch of the corporate world. Or is the carbon offset industry impeccable?

It appears to me that this particular branch of evangelical theology is in dire need of a reformation. When it comes to the sin of carbon emission, perhaps carbon-using Christians should remember the words of Martin Luther’s Letter to Melanchthon: “Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.”