bali

"Meanwhile, the government officials and activists that have flown to Bali will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in one year. Each delegate will produce an average of 4.07 metric tons of carbon dioxide. This total is the equivalent of 20,350 mid-sized cars. Some of the nations' delegates promise to offset their carbon footprint by planting trees or buying emissions credits. But scientists say that these symbolic actions won't do squat."

I'd like to focus on the overall workings of the 'carbon offset' programs. The rest of this needs no explanation, hypocrisy speaks volumes. Carbon offsets are essentially the fake environmentalist mentality that says "I can continue being a dirty rotten capitalistic pig who throws his garbage upon the ground, drive my SUV to the airport to jet off to exotic locations where upon I will meet with other 'important' people and describe how other people who do exactly as I do are evil because they do not plant trees or purchase credits to 'offset' their behavior." It's all phony and preposterous bluster. Planting trees or the amount of 'carbon credits' that would be needed are far in excess of what these people are doing or suggesting that we do. What would be more admirable is instead these people had conferences online, minimizing the polluting effects while using technology, actually reduced their lifestyles or found alternative means of powering them (or funded such means where they don't already easily exist) and so forth. Fake environmentalist behavior that claims such lofty aims as "I'm saving the planet, what are you doing?" is ridiculous. What environmentalism is really doing is not 'saving' the planet. It is intended to create a healthier balance between the interfering behaviors of man upon nature, or rather man's nature. What we might do to realize is that we are just as much a part of a fragile ecosystem that supports our own life. That's good, because we then realize we're just as weak and fragile and it might do to look around at human beings and our problems as a universal system. But what it does not do is say that human beings have the wherewithal to 'save' much of anything. We have power to preserve some things, some things we can influence or control, or at least mitigate. But then we see the power of nature in wildfires or hurricanes, blizzards, and so on. And we remember that we can't predict what the weather will do tomorrow with reliability. And we might relax, and realize that we're not going to save the planet because we don't even know how it works yet. It's very hard to fix something that is 1) maybe not even broken, and 2) doesn't come with a manual or some easily understood coding that allows one to take it apart bit by bit and see how it fit together in the first place. I advise doing something else instead. A bit smarter than trying to fix things that we probably won't have much effect on anyway.

What we can do is save what we have; conservationism is a healthy message. It helps strengthen internal economies by making them entrepreneurial and dependent upon natural resources inherent to their domains by adopting a stronger dependency on what's readily available and conserving what is not. In America's case, there is oil here. That's nice. But not nearly as much as we need. Which isn't. Conserving or replacing that huge volume of oil won't be easy, but no environmentalist plan based on 'carbon offsets' is talking about how to practically replace the fuels and engines of the world's vibrant and growing global economics. It's a giant scam for this reason, because if the people who want it aren't going to take it seriously enough to reduce their own lifestyles to avert 'potential disaster', then what are the rest of us to do?

I don't want to hear another lecture from the UN/Al Gore or any other phony environmentalist until they have energy neutral homes and 80-90% personal recycling, plus they're in a hybrid car pool (not a limo/private plane), and so on. They can afford these amendments. Why aren't they doing them? They should also not have conferences in Switzerland or Bali. They should all be in Darfur, Iraq, etc. Somewhere where it seems a bit hypocritical to say that the environment is man's biggest threat, when it is still clearly man's ever increasing ability to find ways to threaten himself physically.