Online Tool Lets you Offset your Porsche's Carbon Footprint

Feeling guilty about your Porsche’s impact on the environment? Now you can pay to make it all better.

A new online tool, Porsche Impact, calculates your Porsche’s precise carbon footprint, and then offers four different ways to offset it – protecting forests and wildlife in Zimbabwe, promoting solar power in Latin America, improving air and water quality in Central Vietnam, or protecting an old-growth spruce forest on Afognak Island in Alaska.

I fiddled around with the tool, entering a nice, round annual mileage figure of 5,000, with an MPG of 28.3, and Porsche Impact claimed I was responsible for 1.55 tons of CO2/year (with a “recommended offsetting amount” of $29.53).

Porsche then transfers you to its “offsetting partner,” South Pole, a Swiss carbon finance consultancy group with the goal of realizing “deep decarbonisation pathways across industries, based on a thorough understanding of climate risks and opportunities in specific sectors, as well as the highest emission reduction standards.”

Color me a tad … suspicious.

I’m fairly skeptical of “carbon trading” and “carbon credits” – and their tangible impact on the environment – and giving money to admittedly decent charities has an extremely vague connection to your Porsche’s carbon footprint.

Do you want to support green charities? Then do it. If you feel guilty about purchasing a Porsche, then don’t. Buy a hybrid, instead. If you can afford a Porsche – more than double what the average person spends on a car – you can afford a greener alternative. Or buy whatever you want, and shut up about it.