Guilty gas guzzlers are now able to buy pollution credits.

For $160 you can turn a Hummer H2 into a zero-emissions vehicle. No tools or mechanical ability are required.

That's the promise of a California company called TerraPass. It would cost less, of course, to turn a Chevrolet Cobalt into zero-emissions vehicle. That would only be about $40.

The idea is the latest implementation in the trading of "pollution credits." Those are the market-based innovations, introduced a few years ago, which allow smoke-spewing companies to buy and sell the right to emit certain amounts of pollutants into the air.

The stickers TerraPass sends its customers do nothing to stop pollutants from coming out of a car's tailpipe. Instead, the company offers its customers the chance to reduce pollutants from other sources, like power plants, in an amount equivalent to that produced by their car.

That way, you can drive your car while having no net effect on the amount of pollution in the air, the company says.

I have a better idea. Hummer drivers and liberal jet setters can just send me their money and I'll promise to walk around in the dark and not run the air conditioning all summer. If they don't send me any money I'm going to leave the lights on 24 hours a day and the refrigerator door open. Yeah, it's extortion, but so what. Send money now, or the environment gets it!