People who are choosing to go green do want to be recognised for it.

And for many of us who are addicted to social sites like flickr or last.fm, an extra dollar onto our account fee is a simple way to gain that recognition

And yes, like Chris says, putting in a little extra, more than covers your own consumption, makes up for all the people who don’t!

If there’s some research on ppl wanting the tiny PRO label on their name vs. unlimited storage, I’d love to see it. But I don’t deny it’s a very strong incentive.

First, it is hard to argue that there isn’t HUGE money to be made in the ‘carbon offset’ business (literally billions of dollars). Almost every player in the space today is in it for themselves, playing lip service to the environment. If there could be a model whereby NO ONE made any money or directed the flow of money the idea could work.

How do you build an infrastructure that uses or directs 0% of the funds it collects? How can we impact the environment without lining someones pockets? Hmm…

We went with climatefriendly.org, an Australian organization affiliated with the World Wildlife Fund. They fund Gold Standard-accredited clean energy projects in Australia, so we feel reasonably secure that our donation was going to effective work.