Posted on October 19, 2006 - by Calvin L. Smith

Why I Won’t Be Measuring My Carbon Footprint

It has suddenly become so very fashionable to discuss the carbon emissions we as individuals produce. Such talk was rare a year or two ago, but now it seems (to use a fashion industry parlance) green carbon offsetting has become this year’s new black. Thus we face a daily barrage about how we should watch the carbon emissions we produce. The news outlets lap it up, the new Conservative leader spouts it daily, and now we have programmes which teach us how to offset.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that governments and big business produce the most carbon emissions, or even the view still strongly held by some scientists that we cannot be absolutely sure global warming is, in fact, taking place at all (of course, such people are immediately isolated and pilloried much like the Spanish Inquisition of yester-year because today it is so fashionable to assume politicised science is automatically correct). Frankly, I can’t stand the guilt trip that has become the standard blackmail fare of the liberal green lobby. They target us for using a large car, a small car, or even recycled cars. You are also a target if you use lightbulbs, leave your TV on, cook food for too long, buy food imported from the other end of the UK (if you eat food imported from abroad you’re a real heretic!)… you get the idea! Everyone (and I mean everyone) is put on a major guilt trip for global warming. They are even targetting cows now! It seems they produce 3% of greenhouse gases by belching etc, so scientists are actually working overtime to find a way to by-pass these natural functions. There is no hope for the rest of us, then.

However, by far the greatest way they now make us feel guilty is for air travel. There are now calculations to determine what carbon a seat on a flight produces, depending on destination and airline. Even the Bishop of London has got in on the act, declaring it is immoral to fly abroad on holiday (we’ll be watching to make sure he doesn’t from now on, then). In short, now that the masses can afford to take some leisure time abroad, broaden their cultural horizons, and contribute to the economy of poorer countries, they are told that to do so is downright immoral. The carbon emissions we produce, they say, are simply unjustifiable. Cheap travel is off, and abroad is also off (so ironically the loonie left has furthered the loonie right’s xenophobic cause, then), and we must all stay home, ride bikes or skateboards, and only eat what is produced in our immediate vicinity as we measure our carbon footprint.

Well I, for one, will not be doing so, and for a very simple reason. It has been widely reported recently that the very environmentalists who so willingly put us on such guilt trips and tell us to do all these things are, in fact, the biggest polluters of them all! They travel extensively to green conferences and after a day or two of meetings take lengthy holidays in those countries, jetting around in a way that would make a business traveller blush with shame. What rank hypocrisy! In fact, as the Preacher makes clear, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). Societal elites have always sought to pass laws for one sector of society which they believe doesn’t apply to them, whether the Roman aristocrats, Soviet party members, or civil servants. The green liberal elites are no different: “Do what I say and not what I do”, they demand, to which I respond, “Practice what you preach”. Maybe, just maybe when they are forced to live the very hermit life they demand from the rest of us, they might begin to see the totally unrealistic and unsustainable nature of their green policies, and that there may be something after all in trying to exploit our technological prowess to make technology cleaner and greener. It certainly beats putting us on a major guilt trip while they sun and bathe themselves in exotic locations while the rest of us are bullied into cycling to the local corner shop and buying mouldy sprouts at twice the price as the local supermarket.