Built on Guilt - Carbon Offsets  Mark Ontkush Technology /
Gadgets March 9, 2007  Carbon offsets are making the rounds. The
idea is to balance out the carbon generated by an electronic
device by paying for an effort to reduce that carbon; the most
common offset method is to plant trees, although you can buy
credits through the Chicago Climate Exchange as well.  Carbon
offsetting is now a part of several green computing schemes.
Dell has the Plant a Tree for Me, Via has the Clean Computing
Initiative, Kudos IT Systems has something going, etc. Some
vendors, such as Via, include the price of the offsetting in the
product. Others, such as Dell , make the offsetting fee
optional, but then use 100 percent of it to reduce the
emissions.  There are a lot of issues here - the schemes are not
regulated, the price and method of offsetting varies wildly from
one offsetter to another, there is no agreement that offsetting
even works. And since offsetting fees are essentially charitable
donations, the model can be viewed