I’ve always complained that there isn’t a little box to check when you’re buying an airline ticket that would allow you to offset your portion of the carbon emitted during your trip. I’m headed to Charlotte next week on Continental Airlines for some client research, and I finally read my itinerary more closely — turns out that something akin to a “little box” was there all along.

Here’s the catch: It’s in the fine print at the very bottom and then you have to go to a third-party website and type in your trip details all over again. The site calculates the cost of purchasing a carbon offset for your trip based on distance and approximate amount of fuel burned. (It does not, interestingly, take into account how big your plane is or how many people are on board, two details I think would be important to factor in…)

The carbon offset for my trip cost $5.81 — quite reasonable, no?

Why isn’t it easier? Why does it take so many redundant steps? Shouldn’t this functionality be built straight into Continental’s ticketing site?

Whether or not carbon offsets are a good idea in the first place — critics say they do nothing to change undesirable consumer behavior — isn’t really an issue for me. I have to travel for business, a practice which will be difficult to change in the near future, and I might as well at least try to do some good in the meantime.

But shouldn’t it be easier? Wouldn’t it reflect positively on Continental Airlines to provide a seamless, simple service for me and everyone else who shares my point of view?