A bank run by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and his wife is offering a credit card that rewards users for flying on greenhouse-emission-intensive commercial airlines.
Beneficial State Bank recently announced that it is partnering with the League of Conservation Voters to offer a credit card billed as an environmentalist alternative.
The card "rewards you and works to fight climate change," its website says, by contributing a percentage of each purchase made with the card to LCV’s political war chest.
Steyer, who serves on the bank’s board, and his wife Kat Taylor, its chief executive, are also major political players.
Steyer contributed more than $73 million to outside spending groups during the 2014 midterms in an effort to promote his environmentalist views. Taylor helped put together political strategy sessions with other leading greens.
If Beneficial’s work with LCV advances the couple’s environmentalist views, it also rewards cardholders for less earth-friendly activities.
The bank’s League of Conservation Voters Affinity Card awards points to its cardholders that can be redeemed for "tickets good on any airline with no blackout dates," its website says.
More travel means more emissions of greenhouse gasses that Steyer and other environmentalists warn are leading to a precipitous rise in global temperatures.
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, aviation accounts for two to three percent of total fossil fuel use worldwide and is responsible for significant emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere.
"Aviation's contribution … to total emissions resulting from human activities is likely to grow in coming years," according to the IPCC.
Aviation still accounts for significantly less transit-related greenhouse gas emissions, but its rate of emissions growth is significantly higher than other modes of transportation, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
As developing nations see higher per-capita incomes and the costs of air travel decrease, aviation is expected to grow in popularity compared to other means of transportation.
LCV was one of a number of environmentalist groups that sounded the alarm on aviation-related "carbon pollution" in 2012.
"Left uncontrolled, aviation’s carbon pollution is predicted to almost double by 2025 and quadruple by 2050, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization," according to a letter to U.S. Senators sent by LCV and a handful of other environmentalist groups.
Neither LCV nor Beneficial returned requests for comment by press time.