Now you can off-set both carbon emissions and infidelity!
By Lykke E. Andersen*, La Paz, 30 July 2007.

Carbon-offsetting (paying others not to emit carbon into the atmosphere so that you can keep emitting) recently got an absolutely hilarious equivalent: CheatNeutral (http://www.cheatneutral.com/).

This brilliant initiative allows you to pay somebody else to be faithful, so that you keep going on as usual. Of course it is recommended that you first look for ways of reducing your cheating. But once you have done this, you can use CheatNeutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating. This supposedly neutralizes the pain, unhappiness and heartbreak in the atmosphere and leaves you with a clear conscience.

According to Pete Witucki (1), there are at least five ways in which CheatNeutral is like carbon off-setting:

1.       CheatNeutral tries to make it seem acceptable to cheat on your partner. In the same way, carbon offsetting tries to make it acceptable to carry on emitting excess carbon.

2.       CheatNeutral doesn't really do much to reduce the amount of cheating in the world. Carbon offsetting does very little to reduce global carbon emissions.

3.       It seems impossible to measure how much harm cheating on someone does. With carbon offsetting, there is currently no practically feasible way of measuring how much carbon offset projects actually save.

4.       Having CheatNeutral's services available could actually encourages you to cheat more. If the carbon offsetters persuade you that it's possible to offset your emissions, you'll carry on emitting excess carbon through your lifestyle rather than think about reducing your emissions.

5.       CheatNeutral is fundamentally the wrong way to go about solving problems with your relationships. Carbon offsetting is fundamentally the wrong way to go about tackling climate change.