Offset Off Your Ass

This term Carbon Offset is such a dodge from real and personal work towards a 'greener' world. Only rich people who have money but no inclination to make personal sacrifices for conservation use this term.

Carbon offseting is the process of paying a company to not do something that damages the environment. So if you feel like your car is a gas guzzler, go ahead and pay a company to upgrade its greenhouse gas emission technology and feel good about yourself. While in the past it was novel to plant your own tree, you can now pay someone to do it for you.

But how do you know that that tree you paid for wasn't also paid for by one or ten or one hundred other people? You don't. Its a racket. And those that are filthy rich like former and current presidential hopefuls, well they feel very comfortable using twenty times the national average of home electricity and then buying offsets from companies that they own. So really carbon offsetting becomes a lucrative deal for them. They don't turn off one more light in their house but pay themselves to have someone turn off theirs. Perfect.

It used to be that people made voluntary reductions in their own power usage. Ed Begley Jr. decades ago made his own legitimate sacrifices for the sake of the the environment and his home is completely solar powered and all his local transportation is done with hybrid vehicles recently but normally with public transportation and cycling.

Carbon offsetting and now the de jour of Carbon neutral are such baloney. Haven't public schools shown that you can't throw money at a problem and then alibi personal responsibility in teaching children? Well you also can't live your life by preaching everyone else has to cut back and make sacrifices in energy consumption while you don't.