The Carbon Debt lie
Human's impact on our environment is real, just like a beaver's impact on a stream and meadow.
How much impact we truly have, and what real impact this has on the Gaian system, is ripe for debate, and the debate is a healthy one.
Some side-effects of the discussion, however, are dangerous and disturbing, while cloaked in the robes of righteousness. Paying your "Carbon debt" is one of them (see http://www.mycarbondebt.com/ and others).
This site, and others like it, only serve to feed one of the worst aspects of the human psyche, the belief that you can cure all your damage, clean up all the harm you do, in a magic pill or by writing a big enough check.
Paying your "carbon debt" is the environmental equivalent to getting a prescription for diet pills, then heading to the ice cream shop for a triple cone. It’s the equal of sending $50 to UNICEF then buying cheap sneakers from Viet-nam.
Paying someone to plant a tree in your name does not allow you to drive a 450 horsepower truck.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions are simple. There isn’t any mystery, there isn’t any advance education you have to undertake. Don’t avoid the simple things you can do and justify your continued wastefulness by saying “I’m paying my carbon debt!”.
How about just not going so far in debt in the first place? How about being accountable up front, and don’t pretend that a token donation to tree growers reduces your responsibility for cleaning up your act permanently yourself, now, in your house, in your car, in your habits.
You can’t buy your way into heaven. That is true in the physical realm of ecology as it is in metaphysics and religion.
Clean up your act.
How much impact we truly have, and what real impact this has on the Gaian system, is ripe for debate, and the debate is a healthy one.
Some side-effects of the discussion, however, are dangerous and disturbing, while cloaked in the robes of righteousness. Paying your "Carbon debt" is one of them (see http://www.mycarbondebt.com/ and others).
This site, and others like it, only serve to feed one of the worst aspects of the human psyche, the belief that you can cure all your damage, clean up all the harm you do, in a magic pill or by writing a big enough check.
Paying your "carbon debt" is the environmental equivalent to getting a prescription for diet pills, then heading to the ice cream shop for a triple cone. It’s the equal of sending $50 to UNICEF then buying cheap sneakers from Viet-nam.
Paying someone to plant a tree in your name does not allow you to drive a 450 horsepower truck.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions are simple. There isn’t any mystery, there isn’t any advance education you have to undertake. Don’t avoid the simple things you can do and justify your continued wastefulness by saying “I’m paying my carbon debt!”.
How about just not going so far in debt in the first place? How about being accountable up front, and don’t pretend that a token donation to tree growers reduces your responsibility for cleaning up your act permanently yourself, now, in your house, in your car, in your habits.
You can’t buy your way into heaven. That is true in the physical realm of ecology as it is in metaphysics and religion.
Clean up your act.
Labels: carbon debt
posted by Alex Kinnison at 10:08 PM
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