Guido (the guy with the bent nose from Brooklyn) and I are forming a joint venture to sell carbon offsets. Give me $1000 and you can live your life guilt free. For your offset, Guido will reduce the carbon footprint of an enviro-wacko to zero.

And a happy day after earth day to you, too. Lots of kinda anti-enviro (or at least anti-environmentalist) stuff up here the last couple days. When did earth day become "hate the earth day" or, at least "hate those who love the earth day?"

Who's Laurie David?

Jake, I love your venture. That's the first plan I've seen that's guarenteed to actually work, and as a side effect will reduce the contribution of hot air to global warming.

Toby, I curious to know the mechanism by which transparent, hypocritical preening for the media reduces one's carbon footprint. Perhaps you know.

It is easy to criticize. It is hard to be %100 perfect when trying to do something good. We're ALL hyporcrites on some level, even the environmentalists. At least someone is trying to do something about the human footprint instead of doing nothing, cutting down those who are trying to do something or denying problems exist either ignorantly or currupted by lobby interests.

Puhleeze.

Toby, you're right that it's easy for me to criticize but I don't see how it's any harder to talk a big environmental game and then not live up to the standards they're trying to set for everyone else. I can also pretend to care about carbon footprints or overusing toilet paper. But just like them, I'll only be pretending.

Karol, I'm so grateful to you for providing a) the post @RWN, and b) for the opportunity to read the comment thread there.
I'm having a Mother of All Bores Day today.

Thanks for the laugh!

Toby,

I don't think anyone is asking for perfection. But I also don't think it's unreasonable for people doing the preaching to be within a couple standard deviations of the mean with their own carbon footprint.

People like Laurie David and Al Gore are responsible for more CO2 release than hundreds of their fellow citizens. Sure they want to adddress global warming, but they want to do so in a way that only affects everyone else's lifestyle. For them it just means a few more cocktail parties and adulation from fuzzy-headed idealists. That's a long way from not being "100% perfect".

I have no problem, in principle, with a verifiable carbon offset plan. But the carbon offesets you buy now are nothing but a feel-good fraud.

"Toby, you're right that it's easy for me to criticize but I don't see how it's any harder to talk a big environmental game and then not live up to the standards they're trying to set for everyone else. I can also pretend to care about carbon footprints or overusing toilet paper. But just like them, I'll only be pretending."

Karol, you are the Queen of all reason.

Hey i have seen plenty of these eco-wacko hypotcrits in fact we once had one of those wackos living in our comunity him and his group were always filing those stupid lawsuits to stop logging and well he lived ina log house and had another one with a wood burning water heater and i have seen these eco-wackos living in the fancy wood homes and some protesting agsinst logging used cardboard and in some pictures showing these eco-wacks sitting in platforms made of plywood and 2x4s and a few years ago SIERRA CLUB made calandars that were not made from recycled paper and well those goofy window stickers you get from the eco-wacks cant be recycled and AL GORE uses $30:000 of electricity a year he uses more electricity in one month then the avrage american family uses in one year HYPOTCRIT ALL SQUAWK SQUAWK