Today I discovered a site called cheatneutral.com. At cheatneutral.com, you're encouraged to reduce incidences of cheating on your partner, but if you cannot (for reasons beyond your control), you can offset your cheating by investing in a single celibate person, or a monogamous couple.

What is Cheat Offsetting?

When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere.

Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.

Can I offset all my cheating?

First you should look at ways of reducing your cheating. Once you've done this you can use Cheatneutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating.

It's an ingenious scheme, don't you think? Here's one of several successful case studies found on the site:

Steve and Lisa

Steve and Lisa met while on holiday in Spain, and quickly fell head over heels for each other. That Christmas, at his office party, Steve got drunk and unavoidably repeatedly cheated on Lisa with Cheri, a co-worker. He paid Cheatneutral just £2.50 and we invested his money in Alex, a single man with no prospect of finding a partner. In return for the payments, Alex agreed to remain single.

Thanks to Cheatneutral, Steve was able to come clean about his cheating to Lisa, and when he presented her with the Cheatneutral certificate they realised they wanted to get married. Their wedding is taking place in the summer. Steve continues to regularly cheat on Lisa and Cheatneutral continues to fund projects like Alex with his offset payments. - cheatneutral

Of course, the site is a spoof - anything more than that would be morally repugnant. But it makes an interesting comparison. Can we 'cheat' on the environment, and 'make good' by offsetting that cheating?

Obviously, in a world-in-transition (and we at Celsias do like to think of the world as being in the midst of a green-transition), some cheating is going to be unavoidable. We've been blatantly cheating for so long, that all our systems and economies are based on it. To suddenly stop cheating would bring the world to a standstill, and anarchy (imagine grounding all aircraft today, or making all vehicles illegal).

But, how do we define that fine line between unavoidable cheating, and promiscuity? Are we doing everything we possibly can to avoid cheating, or are our offsets merely indulgences?

Thoughts?

 

Further Reading:

• The Battle of the Carbon Credits
• Hogging the Sky
• Does Cap-and-Trade Reward Big Polluters?
• The Case for Carbon Trading
• The Case Against Carbon Trading
• Carbon Offsetting - Environmentally Sound, or a Scam?
• Carbon Credits Used to Fund GMOs?
• Boos, Tears, Cheers - the Bali Conference is Over