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Al Gore and his philanthropic organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, support creating a .eco domain to promote environmental causes. The idea comes from Dot Eco LLC, which claims they will donate some of the cash from registration fees of .eco web addresses to green initiatives. Dot Eco plans to file an application for the .eco top-level domain later this year with ICANN, the non-for-profit that coordinates website names.

Whether it will get approved at all is still completely up in the air, but just the idea itself raises some interesting questions.

How do you define what is worthy of the .eco tag? Both groups say they would consider a vetting process, according to BusinessWeek. It could get pretty messy, though. What’s the U.S. government (.gov) and what’s an accredited educational institution (.edu) is well-defined, but how would you draw the line at what’s eco and what isn’t?

What’s the best test? The sum of an organization’s carbon footprint? A swearing in on a copy of An Inconvenient Truth? I want your suggestions for a good barometer, cause I’m having a hard time imagining one that will work.