SALES PITCH: A GUILT-FREE SUV

By Phoebe Sweet

Thursday, Nov. 22, 2007 | 6:54 a.m.

Picture the new wave in conservation: a tree-hugging, socks-and-Birkenstocks, environmentally friendly ... SUV?

A $60,000, eight-cylinder, 12 mile-per-gallon Land Rover as the car for the environmentally conscious might seem like an oxymoron. But it is just the latest seeming contradiction in a world where gun-toting conservationists, evangelical environmentalists and carbon-neutral corporations are increasingly the norm.

Land Rover Las Vegas says it achieves that balance of luxury and responsibility by purchasing carbon offsets - which aim to mitigate the effects of carbon emissions by planting CO2-absorbing trees - for every new and used SU it sells.

It's a controversial way to have your Rover and drive it, too. To take it out for a guilt-free spin knowing that your Powered by Carbon Offset Credits bumper sticker will elicit a thumbs up from other drivers, not that other, less wholesome gesture.

In many ways, Las Vegas - where ostentation and conservation coexist, though somewhat uncomfortably - could be ground zero for the ecological consumerism movement.

So it seems fitting that this summer Land Rover Las Vegas launched its program - one Land Rover might replicate nationally - to offset 50,000 miles' worth of carbon emissions for its SUVs. The program was the brainchild of outdoorsmen at the dealership, who say they use their vehicles off-road in some of Nevada's wildest places. The offsets, they say, are paid for by the dealership, not added to the price of the vehicle. (Volkswagen started a similar program last month to offset a year's worth of carbon for each vehicle.)

The dealership says it has offset carbon from 150 vehicles - absorbing 4,800 tons of carbon dioxide by planting 3,600 trees along the Mississippi River - since it began the program.

The offsets are purchased through The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit environmental group that preserves wilderness, plants trees in deforested areas and educates consumers about the global warming pollutants produced by driving, eating and shopping.

A Land Rover emits about 23 metric tons of carbon dioxide over 50,000 miles, which would cost about $100 to offset, according to the fund's carbon calculator.

Offset organizations like The Conservation Fund and CarbonFund.org promise to make everything from autos to air travel, weddings to Wellies, light bulbs to lettuce carbon-neutral. Naysayers caution that not all offset organizations are created equal - some are for-profit corporations, for example. But all promote the same goal - to offer environmentally conscious consumers a way to reduce their impact on the planet by trading it for renewable energy projects, reforestation of fallow farmland and energy efficiency and conservation programs.

But are they a legitimate way of lessening one's impact on the already overburdened environment or just another way yuppie soccer moms and off-road dads are assuaging their bourgeois guilt?

"Most of them, unfortunately, are entirely bogus," Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said during a visit to Las Vegas last week. "I think if people want to put up money and plant trees, that's a wonderful thing. But they shouldn't think that by planting trees they can then drive an inefficient car they don't need, a living room on wheels."

Russell Simon, communications manager for CarbonFund.org, disagrees. He says what matters is that people are doing something. And it doesn't matter why consumers are offsetting, only that they are.

"The climate doesn't care how you feel about it. The climate doesn't care what your motivations are," Simon said.

And, he added, it's unlikely anyone's running out and buying a Hummer because he's suddenly realized he can offset its carbon emissions by paying to plant saplings in Nicaragua.

As with the reduce, reuse, recycle ethos of the '80s, consumers should determine how much global warming pollution they're responsible for each year and find ways to reduce that amount before purchasing offsets, say Simon and other offset providers. Paying to plant trees along the Mississippi or fund a wind farm in Iowa, they say, should be the last step.

"You can't get to zero without carbon offsets if you eat, wear clothes, visit family for Thanksgiving," Simon said.

Simon says the ancillary benefit of consumers' buying offsets for the warm-fuzzies they get or the points they score is that in the process they become educated about their carbon footprint and how to reduce it while they shop.

And offset programs like the ones Land Rover and Volkswagen America are offering on their cars are a good way to reach environmental newbies, says Jena Thompson, director of The Conservation Fund's GoZero carbon offset program.

"If all we do is talk to the same green audience, we'll never convince people they can make changes in their behavior."

But we as a nation aren't exactly rushing to make basic changes, let alone real sacrifices. And some wonder whether it will take the Atlantic's lapping at the foot of the Empire State Building for citizens to stop feigning care for the environment and actually start caring.

Americans won't be willing to change the way they live until two things happen: It becomes clear how the effects of climate change will affect them personally and change becomes easy, says Bill Burtis, communications manager for the environmental group Clean Air - Cool Planet.

Convince hunters of global warming's effects on wildlife and soccer moms of the link between pollution and childhood asthma, for example. Then make energy more expensive so people use less of it and make environmentally friendly products more affordable and available.

Steve Rypka, owner of Las Vegas environmental consulting business GreenDream Enterprises, says education is the answer.

"Much of what we do in society is ... insanity," he said. But equipped with the facts and an understanding of what is at stake, he added, "I believe that people would make the right choices."