The moneyed eco-conscious need not make any personal sacrifices at all:
If you plant some trees, is it OK to drive a sports utility vehicle that is not fuel efficient?The question is not as silly as it sounds. People worried about global warming increasingly are trying to "offset" the carbon dioxide -- the leading greenhouse gas -- they spew into the atmosphere when they drive, fly or flick on a light. One idea popular with the eco-conscious is to have trees planted for them. You get to keep driving and flying, but those trees are supposed to suck in your trail of carbon.
Whole forests have been funded by tree-loving celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and the band Coldplay, and more modest packages tailored to typical consumers are proliferating.
But some researchers say planting trees -- while a good thing _ is at best a marginal solution to global warming. Still others decry tree planters who continue to jet off to Cannes, drive their SUVs or generally fail to reduce their fuel-hungry lifestyle. To those critics, plantings and other carbon offsets are like the medieval practice of selling indulgences to wash away sins: It may feel good, but it doesn't solve much.
"The sale of offset indulgences is a dead-end detour off the path of action required in the face of climate change," says a report by the Transnational Institute's Carbon Trade Watch.
As you might expect, heads of tree-planting offsetting organizations feel differently. Eric Carlson of the tree-planting nonprofit Carbonfund.org responds with "the worst thing is to do nothing," having apparently never heard of bloodletting, self-flagellation, drinking powdered gold, sacrificing virgins to the sun god or moon goddess, or any other useless act meant to ameliorate an unhappy condition. Not all actions are helpful. Their accepting money to plant trees so an eco-conscious jet set can feel as innocent as newborn lambs as they leave their climate-controlled mansions to wing off to Europe for a few days is a laughable practice that becomes downright irritating when it's accompanied by their clients giving conservation lectures to the hoi polloi who individually use a fraction of the resources they do.
Posted by floridacracker at May 28, 2007 09:21 AMThey have the teremity to argue I should bow down prostate to the knowledge *man* is causing global warming just beggars the question as to wtf was causing it before man discovered fire.
And just wth is going on with the polar icecaps on Mars? Is there a secret alien society choking out massive quantities of polutants causing them to melt?
I refuse their insipid platitudes from the eco-gimplet and am not dazzled by his pronouncements of impending doom.
B-b-but, they mean well. Surely, that must count for something.
Posted by: Sean M. at May 28, 2007 06:41 PMAs usual, your brilliance is like the sun shiniing on Ocala right around July 25th at noon.
Posted by: dymphna at May 28, 2007 07:33 PMThe priorities of mankind are what is offset..
The world was flat for a long time...even if you convinced those of us who don't see global warming
as a threat, let alone an immediate threat, it still ranks -30 quadzillion next to ..
take your pick:
World hunger, malaria, terrorism, illegal border crossings/illegal immi-fucking-gration, teen pregnancy, tort reform, excess taxation, insanely
corrupt government/schools and education..
should I go on.. I mean, really.. this global warming fiasco is just Nationalized Healthcare
for the current self proclaimed tech-head generation, and frankly it's bullshit. The whole thing is.
You can divide the country right down these lines
All the folks who believe in ET's, Alien Abduction
Global Warming, The 9-11 conspiracy, JFK conspiracy, and the phenomenon of fire melting steel, on the left...
Everybody else on the right.
Posted by: csason at May 29, 2007 12:38 PMYeah, but think of this from a profit-making perspective: look at the money one can make from taking advantage of the eco-libs guilt. If you have some land in the rural part of a state(any state), you can charge just about anything you want to these people, and they would be willing to do it, since they are "helping the environment", after all.
Just something to ponder.
Posted by: Stacy at May 29, 2007 08:46 PMTrees don't eliminate carbon, they store it. So wouldn't buying trees as carbon offsets be like sending a message to your grandchildren/great-grandchildren, "Here's the carbon I didn't want, you deal with it."?
Posted by: marybeth at May 30, 2007 02:02 AMYep. When the trees die and decay, they release all that carbon right back. But at least Al Gore wouldn't have had to quit heating his pool.
Posted by: Donnah at May 30, 2007 02:36 AM