'Eco-Friendly' Car Club? Huh?

How's this for a self-contradictory idea: an "environmentally friendly" auto club.

The organization calling itself that is the Better World Club. Eco bloggers at Grist and Autobloggreen sing its praises, but the club's green credentials irk me.

You would think that it sends out hybrid tow trucks to provide roadside assistance or tows broken-down cars to solar-powered mechanics' garages. But those things are not much more than an eco-friendly car owner's tailpipe dream.

Instead of green business practices or services, which would be hard to produce in this circumstance, the club mostly relies on supporting green ideals to justify its moniker. It gives a portion of its revenue to environmentally friendly organizations and helps its members obtain carbon credits to offset the travel that, ironically, they can arrange through Better World.

Because auto clubs don't actually make their money from roadside assistance -- it's the loss leader that pulls members in so they'll use things like travel services -- it has relationships with a handful of eco-friendly hotels and car-rental agencies that specialize in alternative-fuel vehicles. The latter was probably a bigger deal when Better World opened for business in 2002, before you could easily rent a hybrid by walking into Hertz or Enterprise.

It does offer roadside assistance to bicyclists (cyclist membership is $40 a year or $18 as an add-on to an auto membership), which is novel and definitely eco-friendly.

But otherwise its pricing and services are pretty interchangeable with AAA's, as Better World itself points out. It offers roadside assistance, free maps, gas coupons and discounts with major car-rental companies and mainstream hotel chains like Marriott, Holiday Inn, Days Inn and Ramada.