This might seem slightly off-kilter as an environmental subject, but as an educational blogger I'm borrowing your soapboxes for a bit.

It's finally trendy to look for ways to reduce your carbon footprint--but no one wants to inconvenience themselves too much, and frankly we have more success when they don't have to. It works even better when a conservation strategy makes their lives MORE convenient; for example, hybrid cars flew off the lots in CA when they were allowed into HOV lanes.

So I'm offering up an idea of my own, from over in my neck of the woods (topically speaking): online education. I'm the proud editor of an article over at WorldWideLearn.com, my mother ship, that synthesizes research from Europe concluding that online degrees use about 90% less energy than traditional degree programs.

And, like HOV lines, they're a damn sight more convenient for a lot of people.

Online degrees have a bad rap, thanks to diploma mills that have been scamming people for years. But they're getting more popular, especially globally, and they're improving in quality as they seek regional accreditation (the gold standard in the US, and held by most major online institutions).

More importantly, they have the potential to create a vast network of globally aware and informed citizens--without expending too many additional resources to do so.

Could this thing take off? Should the US gov't offer tax or tuition subsidies to students at accredited online schools--or to students who take online classes from traditional institutions (a rapidly expanding subset)?  What do you think?