Leo and Al then portentously announced that for the first time ever, the Academy Awards ceremony had gone green. What did that mean? Solar panels in the designer gowns? It turns out that the Academy neutralized the evening's "carbon footprint" by buying carbon credits. That means it sent money to a "carbon broker," who promised, after taking his cut, to reduce carbon emissions somewhere on the planet equivalent to what the stars spewed into the atmosphere while flying in on their private planes.
In other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation.
Next, you'll be telling me that Al Gore and Michael Moore are actually well within their body mass index limits because they've purchased caloric offsets from poor Third World children.
They probably purchase some Cocaine Offsets, too, from some Buddhist monestary. [Let me clarify some late St. Patrick's Day blogging. The "they" is a slam at the Hollywood types in the cited article who boasted of their Academy offsets--not VP Gore and Moore. Although the monestary reference could have been a clue without this clarification.]
Because really, sacrificing your lifestyle is for the little people. Most of the world has so little already, what's a little less for billions of unfashionably poor so that the truly concerned can light up the neighborhood and drive home in air-conditioned limousine comfort?
To say I have contempt for these people doesn't do justice to what I think.
