Blind Spots

As I was recently standing in my unheated backroom, diligently breaking down cardboard boxes, it dawned on me that we have a pretty small carbon footprint.

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. To environmentalists, it’s like you stepped in dog-doo and are walking all over the carpet.  But our messy footprint seems to be relatively small, as least for an American. Our electric bills, for an old four-bedroom farmhouse, are routinely under $100 a month, even in winter. We hang up our clothes to dry, use recyclable bags at the supermarket (except when we forget them and leave them at home-which is frequently) and recycle. We use about five gallons of gasoline in a typical week and produce one bag of garbage in the same time period.

On the other hand, Al Gore has a house that makes ours look like a pup tent. He uses more electricity per month than our whole county. He flies all over the world in his private, eco-busting private jumbo jet. Yet he’s the poster boy for the ecology people. How can this be? Because he’s “carbon neutral.” Despite all the energy he consumes, which is considerable, he supposedly has a zero effect on the environment. How? He purchases energy credits. I found this on a Canadian website that was explaining that people and companies are given credits of energy. If you use more than your share you can simply buy some credits from those who don’t use as much. Therefore, Al is theoretically using no energy at all because he buys what I’m sure are a substantial number of credits. The poor guy who was offering this explanation was having a hard time convincing some scoffers, who had the audacity to point out that Al’s home uses more energy than most third world countries. “You just don’t understand” he whimpered, “He’s NUETRAL because he’s buying CREDITS.” Capitalizing the letters didn’t help his case much, since even the most ignorant of us earth-scorchers can spell SCAM. If I understand this right, as long as you have a lot of money you can pretty much live however you want, energy speaking.

Now I’m sure that the person defending this nonsensical reasoning is a fairly intelligent individual. After all, it’s not his fault he’s Canadian. It’s just that he has a blind spot in this area. Most of us have a blind spot somewhere. It’s when a person who is in all other areas of his life is a rational, intelligent human being, has one area of belief that defies that logic. It’s a blind spot to fashion that allows me to go out on my once a week journey to the mall.

Politics is a great example, where otherwise friendly, compassionate people become flaming lunatics for the right or the left. Otherwise level-headed people can watch Nancy Pelosi state in a speech that the Democrats are” Applying a pay-as-you-go” philosophy to the spending bills” and not laugh out loud. Blind spot. It’s also like the Supreme Court justices who ruled that Bill Clinton could be sued for sexual harassment without causing any disruption to the running of the government. How did that work out? Blind spot.

Now I’m not totally against blind spots. My wife is an intelligent, level-headed person in most areas, yet she’s stayed married to me for 33 years. So I consider that a benign blind spot. Even believing that Al is a humble servant of humanity, rather than a charlatan raking in millions each year while living on a higher standard of living than most kings, is really benign. Besides, it has given me an idea. I know that I use a lot less energy than most people, so I’m assigning myself a surplus of say; two million credits. I’m willing to sell portions of my supply to the rest of you gas-guzzling earth-killers for just $5 a piece, with a hundred credit minimum. Then you can feel free to go purchase an army tank to drive around and still feel all warm and fuzzy because you’re “carbon neutral” like Al. After all, it’s my duty as well as Al’s to help save the planet.

I’ll be out back breaking down boxes waiting for your call.