02/26/2007: "Green Guilt"

You recycle, buy organic local products, drive a hybrid car, you even invited your friends over to watch Al Gore's movie for the third time. You stopped eating burritos made with meat and beans because of the flatulent methane gases you and the cows were emitting. You pitched a fit when your meal-to-go came in Styrofoam containers.

Still you have this nagging feeling that you just aren't doing enough to save the planet from certain looming destruction. You have paranoid guilt feelings because lurking right behind you is your big-ass carbon footprint that follows you around like a dark gaseous stinking cloud.

You know you could do more but like an addict you drink bottled water instead of water from the tap because you think it is safer. But it is bottled in an energy wasting plant by illegal aliens and transported to the island from California by trucks that spew greenhouse gas. The plastic bottles take too much fossil fuel to create and dispose of but you want that water anyway.

You don't want to think about how much energy it took to create the batteries for your hybrid car or how you will dispose of them when they burn out or that the energy to charge them comes from dams that kill salmon. You know the parts to your car are foreign and imported from afar at a huge cost to the planet. You must ride the ferry and it does not burn biodiesel. You take eco-tour vacations to exotic places in the world in jets that burn more fuel getting you there and back than some third world countries use in a year.

Your house was not built entirely out of earth sustaining products. It is filled with modern conveniences that have damaged the atmosphere and brought us to the brink of extinction. Then you look around and the realization hits you in the face like the foul smelling cloud of school bus exhaust. You have a colossal carbon footprint problem and you feel guilty about it don't you?

But you earned the right to your lifestyle. You love mother earth. You love to kayak on pristine waters, hike in the old growth forests, sail with the wind at your back and smell the salmon breath of the whales in silence. You love the freedom and benefits of living in this consumer driven western world and yet you hate it because we are all going to die very soon from the excess consumption that causes global warming. So what are you going to do about it?

Buy carbon credits of course! You can have your cake and eat it too. You can turn around and embrace the odiferous carbon cloud you produced that threatens to choke out all life on Earth by investing in sustainable renewable technologies. It is so easy to give and I guarantee you will feel good about your gargantuan carbon footprint at the same time. You no longer have to feel guilty for your part in the planets destruction! Think of the freedom you will feel. So how does it work?

Remember last election when we voted to put electric utilities in a headlock until they cried uncle and increased their production of energy from renewable resources? Well now there is a way to invest your money into projects that cut greenhouse gas emissions such as tidal turbine generators right here in the San Juan Islands. You can also invest in nuclear power projects that will eliminate carbon emissions and produce unlimited energy. Or you can invest in my non-profit company for solar research (it involves me sitting on sunny beaches while trying to write funny columns).

But seriously, all you really have to do is have a smaller carbon footprint than the next guy. When being chased by a bear you don't have to outrun the bear, just outrun the guy next to you. Nothing helps you feel better than pointing out what a big polluter your neighbor is or how she drives a gas hog and doesn't recycle all of her plastic. And it's okay to jet around the world as long as you can point to the fact that you've invested a bundle in an enormous eyesore of a wind farm in the Columbia Gorge.

All you have to do is buy carbon credits that support clean energy alternatives. Then you can be a highfalutin big pollutin', cigar smokin', burrito eatin', vintage car collectin', limosine ridin' jet-set Hollywood star who owns four houses with 80 rooms and ten pools all heated, and feel just as good as the white bearded tie-dyed deadhead driving a VW bus with a bumper sticker on it that says "America Sucks!"