TerraPass
I drive a fairly small vehicle that is nearly as efficient as a Toyota Prius. I did the research on it about a year ago when I considered upgrading to a hybrid. With a Prius my savings on gas costs would have likely been less than a hundred dollars per year. I quickly abandoned the thought of making a switch to hybrid in favour of paying off the remainder of the financing on my existing vehicle. No monthly car payments after what will soon be eight years. That sounds good.
Working from a home office, I drive less than the average driver. Still, I knew there is more I could do to help offset the damage that my vehicle has and will inflict on the environment during the time I own it. A couple of weeks ago I’ve found the very thing that will help me clean up the mess that my car leaves behind. The best part? It will cost me only $39USD for the whole year.
You may have already heard about it as the press coverage for this ‘clean-up method’ has been quite substantial. It is called a TerraPass and has been featured in Blogcritics.org, Globe and Mail (subscription required), The New York Times and many other print and virtual publications.
How can $39 make such a huge difference? “The key idea behind TerraPass is that we help tip the balance to make clean energy projects pay off, substantially reducing carbon dioxide emissions with minimal investment.” The price of generating clean, reusable energy is usually slightly higher than that of burning fossil fuels. TerraPass is able to offset that difference, making clean energy a much more appealing choice.
Most people will be able to purchase a TerraPass for $30-80USD per year. The calculation is based on the type of vehicle you drive, and the distance you travel per year.
It does not take a lot to get me behind a cause like this, but I have strict criteria on which initiatives I actively promote to others. It mainly comes down to good science. I take pride in avoiding the “snake oil salesman” type of causes. If it is questionable and my belief in it is based on some sort of internalised faith, I tend to keep it to myself. I need to be able to make a good scientific case for what I present, or else I tend to avoid putting an idea out into the public court until I can do so. TerraPass meets this criteria in large part, but does leave me with one reservation.
In the TerraPass blog a mention is made in support of the “10 second rule”. The rule suggests that idling your vehicle for 10+ seconds produces more emissions than shutting down and restarting the engine. As a result, the blog goes on to suggest shutting down your vehicle at red lights. A link is provided to the source which gives it some weight, but at the end of the day the whole thing sounds over zealous.
This is the kind of talk that can turn people away in fear that they can never do enough, and someone will always nag them to do more. In my view it is a huge hit on the creditability of those that promote such ideas. Forget the shutting down of your vehicle every time you expect to idle more than 10 seconds. You are better off saving hundreds of dollars by not abusing your starter and engine, and using the saved money to buy a new fridge to replace that old, inefficient one. Make sense?
At the end of the day the TerraPass is a great way to reduce your environmental footprint, and I encourage you to look into it. Be it for yourself, or as a gift for an environmentally conscious friend or family member, at the end of the day we all need to start paying off the environmental tab that we have accrued.
TerraPass can be found at www.terrapass.com.
Photo credit goes to Chris Potter.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:04
There always will be people urging us to do more, regardless of how many steps one may take to correct one’s actions; for some, any amount of action is never enough. But the important thing is to do something, take some kind of action, move oneself forward in whatever way one is comfortable with; every little bit helps! This product sounds like a good idea (though admittedly, I don’t drive, so I don’t really know what is feasible or not) - a way, as you say, to pay off our environmental tab. We are all so busy worrying about our more material needs - our SUVs, houses, boats, etc. - that we shrug off our concerns about the the environment (providing we’re so enlightened in the first place). But as Thoreau said, what’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?