Did you hear? MasterCard has introduced a new credit card where “every swipe” helps offset your personal carbon footprint. For every dollar you charge, Sustain:Green, which manages the rewards program, will offset two lbs of CO2.

That’s right, now you can finance your annual vacation to the Bahamas without feeling guilty! And if you believe that, have I got a credit card for you.

Oh, how ridiculous this new eco-marketing venture is. There’s the sustainababbly (pdf) name, and an uninspired and politically correct choice of offset project (planting trees).

Even worse, the concept reinforces the idea that climate change – and its solutions – can be solved on an individual level, and manipulates consumers into feeling good about consuming. Slavoj Žižek said it best when he described how, in this new stage of “cultural capitalism”, the absolution for your consumer-sin is embedded directly in the price of the product.

Now, don’t get me wrong. If Americans are going to use credit cards, it’s better that we use a Sustain:Green card instead of one that gives them free stuff ­– such as free miles for carbon-laden airline travel. At least this way rainforests in Brazil will get some new trees via the certified Mata no Peito forest preservation project.

But how much money would a cardholder have to spend in a year to offset his or her footprint? The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates 2012 emissions at 6.53bn metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, which comes to an average of 20.8 metric tons (45,800 lbs) per US resident.

Using the EPA’s estimates and taking into account the bonuses the card offers (2,500 lbs for every $1,250 spent per quarter), cardholders would have to spend just under $18,000 a year to offset a typical American’s emissions. (It would be less in the first year, when the card offers a one-time 5,000 lb bonus with cardholders’ first purchase.)

Assuming, that is, that the offsets work – that the trees are planted; that the livelihood projects that are funded actually create sustainable alternatives to logging and growing soy; and that these projects don’t inadvertently displace indigenous people or finance the planting of mono-cropped tree farms, as many other offset projects have.

Even if the Mata no Peito project is sound and well-managed, new research has found that the full social cost of a ton of carbon may be more like $220, not the $13.12 per ton available on Terrapass or the less than $9 per ton value placed on it by Sustain:Green, assuming a 1% cashback rate.

Maybe some low-hanging offsets can be plucked for now. But ultimately, the scale and scope of emissions reductions are so great that we need to focus corporate, governmental and citizen energy on steeply pricing carbon and keeping a large percentage of our fossil fuel reserves – 82% in the case of coal – safely buried in the ground. The message of a card like this one is that we can spend our way to a greener, climate-friendly planet. It leads us in the wrong direction.

A far better choice for a smart, green consumer would be to choose a credit card that gives cash back ­– at 1% that $18,000 would return $180 – and donate that money to an NGO working to effectively tackle the root causes of climate change. Take your pick of root causes: a consumer culture stimulating overconsumption; corporations pushing consumers to use more fossil fuels and eat more animal products; or an absurd lack of resources for basic family planning services, to name a few.

I can imagine a much bolder carbon offsetting initiative. Sustain:Green’s rewards dollars could support basic contraception access in the US, for example. Every new American is projected to create an average of 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide over his or her lifetime. Providing birth control – whether condoms, intrauterine devices or pills – costs relatively little. Every cardholder could potentially cut tens or even hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 during their lifetimes, which would result in quite an effective offset program.

With current offsets available, $180 could buy 13.7 tons of offsets at $13.12 per ton (as is available on Terrapass), which is less than what the card delivers. So if you’re in favor of offsets, this card makes sense. But offsets, as they work now, aren’t effective enough to combat climate change on the scale needed.

I hate to once again play the grumpy environmentalist, but it’s hard not to see this new card as a cheap marketing ploy to pull more green consumers into using credit cards (and running a monthly balance, which is where the big bucks are).

The trouble is, offsetting our consumer lifestyle won’t get us to where we need to go. We need to consume far less, move away from a growth-centric economic system and reduce the human population – all of which will take bold institutional changes, not a credit card upgrade.

The real danger here is that so-called “green consumption” will serve, not as a gateway to further action, but as an end in itself. As environmental science professor Michael Maniates of Yale-NUS College wrote more than a decade ago: “Individualizing responsibility does not work ­– you can’t plant a tree to save the world.” Instead, he wrote, it “diverts attention from political arenas that matter. In this way, individualization is both a symptom and a source of waning citizen capacities to participate meaningfully in processes of social change.”

If Sustain:Green is up for making a political activism offset credit card, that might do the trick. But until then, get yourself a cashback card, and donate your 1% (or more) to good groups taking bold actions. Even better, get involved in helping to make the change yourself.

Correction: This piece was updated on 3 February to more accurately represent the carbon offsets offered by the Sustain:Green credit card.

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