May 6, 2008
So you plant 10,000 mango trees as appeasement for your eco-sins and then the trees die.
I think you should assume that the eco-gods are punishing you for these grandiose gestures that do not erase your hypocrisy.
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I know its been said before but this is simply the 21st century version of buying indulgencies from the Vatican of Global Warming.
I noticed AlGore was left out though I wonder why. He is a celebrity filmmaker now.
The gods might not be appeased, but a Nobel committee will be considering you for a peace prize.
Indulgences is exactly the right metaphor, HD. I want to trust our ingenuity and our ability to make money out of new ideas to address our environmental issues, but it seems like we skip right over the engineering inventiveness to the empty gestures and money-making shortcuts.
Last week, we had Earth Day on campus. The whole thing involved extra loud rock bands pounding out electric chords over multiple banks of speakers. I wondered why they didn't go unplugged.
it seems like we skip right over the engineering inventiveness to the empty gestures and money-making shortcuts.
Because the former doesn't require either effort or sacrifice and the latter allows for opportunists to help fools part with their money.
120 bath towels??
Just how stinky can Team Streisand get?
But what can one expect from a body of people who, when honouring their fallen colleagues during that famous Oscars segment, highlighted EVERYONE including foreign filmmakers, save Theo van Gogh, slain by an Islamic extremist.
Cheers,
Victoria
EVERYONE including foreign filmmakers, save Theo van Gogh, slain by an Islamic extremist
Well that's because he was a culturally insensitive racist bigot whose chickens came home to roost.
Victoria,
Every time my sister-in-law and her family of five visit us, they come in the deep heat of New Orleans summer. They use at least 120 towels by the end of the week. Except it's our approximately 10 towels, washed 12 times. And we share one bathroom. What a nightmare, environmental and otherwise.
Beth, even I know not to go down to Nawlins in July and August. I am going down on Thursday, and expect at least one day to be sticky.
Is your sister in law a yankee? 8)
Trey
Here lies, wrapt up in forty thousand towels,
The only proof that Caroline had bowels.
Pope
"and then the trees die."
Coldplay is heartless.
Morrissey needs to do a Paper is Murder album cover.
Lord, no, Trey. She's a Louisiana girl, now living in Dallas. But that latitude change just from Dallas can work a hurt on anyone.
They come when the kids are out of school, and done with the assorted camps and sports and recitals and such. Then they spend all day out doing touristy stuff. And getting teenagers to hang up and re-use a towel is beyond my persuasive ability, apparently.
Even hard-core New Orleanians arrive home after work in July and August feeling slightly stunned and terribly damp.
The 10,000 (now dead) mango trees is an example of a typical carbon offset scam/scheme, of the type that Al Gore was selling (and buying). One problem with the scheme was that typically no money was set up for water or maintenance over the next 100 years, and so you often end up with dead trees. Another problem is that those availing themselves of this as a carbon offset would typically take the entire 100 years up front, despite 99% of the "benefits" being over the next 99 years. The result of that was that carbon dioxide release was sped up by those 99 years. Or, to put it another way, they released CO2 this year and expected to reclaim it over the next 99 years. Not really a good idea when we are worried about CO2 today. Finally, these schemes never take into account that when the trees die (preferably after the 100 years, but sometimes much sooner) most of the CO2 sequestered is released back into the atmosphere.
In short, a big scam, working as indulgences so that these moral superiors can continue to fly in their private jets, live in mansions, and drive fleets of SUVs.
I'm of the impression that planting trees is a poor way of permanently trapping CO2. A young, growing tree, absorbs carbon into its structure, this is true, but a mature tree will reach a near stasis with bringing in carbon for new leaves and twigs, but losing branches and old leaves at a comparable rate, and then eventually dies releasing everything resulting in no net entrapment over its life cycle. The minor exception being if a plot of land that was barren of plant life was made permanently fertile, it's carrying capacity would increase.
On the other hand, the shells of the little shellfish that eventually become limestone and marble do "permanently" extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If man could encourage their growth, by perhaps adding some growth limiting micro-nutrient, then that would be a genuine carbon offset. Growing trees is a typical feel good exercise; done by people who balk at doing something concrete.
I don't get why Travolta is on there. I've only ever heard the most generic talk about global warming from him, when he was cornered on it.
Granted, I don't follow celebs much so maybe I'm missing his big bio-screeds. But I haven't missed DiCaprios's, Martin's or Streisand's.
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