Off Kilter Offsets

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 - 12:50 a.m.

Our Board of Supervisors is nuts. The suggestion now is that we ban fireplaces from buildings.

This is ridiculous.

You guys remember when Mount Pinatubo exploded and threw its particulate matter up into the atmosphere where it stayed for many months? Did you all know the temperature around the world was LOWER because the sunlight was filtered?

The scientists need to make up their minds whether Burning Things cause global warming or they do not.

And I'm talking about real scientists as opposed to those tablefuls of assholes who sit around and wait to get paid to back up this theory or that with facts and figures that have been cooked to order.

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Speaking of the global warming theory, and just in case you might think the McLaughlin household is made up of evil right-wingers who don't give a goddamn about the trees and water and polar bears -- I thought I'd list What John And I Are Doing For The Environment:

- We choose to live in a mult-unit apartment instead of a stand-alone building, because in that way, six families are making the just a little over the same environmental footprint as just one, building-marterials-outgassing-wise

- We choose to drive our vehicle between four and five thousand miles per year. John's run the numbers and discovered that a well-maintained non-hybrid automobile which is driven less than five thousand miles a year is more friendly to the environment than a hybrid vehicle run three or four times as much.

- The rest of the time, we choose to take electric public transit in the City and County.

- In ten years, we have not turned on our heat in the wintertime, with the exception of the little wall heater, ten minutes at a time, only during the coldest days, and only immediately after a shower. Instead, we do that old fashioned thing that used to work wonderfully for me when I was located up in the Idaho Panhandle with no electricity and no other fuel: We bundle up!

- We do not have air conditioning. The fans we use the most have had timers on them.

- We recycle about sixty percent of our waste through the Sunset Scavengers and our deliberate choice to turn in our aluminum cans, and re-use plastic bags whenever we can.

- We only use the top of the stove for our cooking. We prefer the ease and location of the toaster oven. We *could* get the oven element repaired, but we don't miss it any more.

- John works all day, every day, to save the environment and make sure the world is as environmentally restored and free of pollutants as possible. Do you know what he does for a living? He's an environmental claims consultant. What he does -- every working day of his life -- is make sure that toxic spills are cleaned up and the place that received the spill is restored to its previous non-polluted condition. And oh, by the way, for whatever this is worth -- carbon offsets are NOT allowed as part of the recompense / cleanup process, because as of this writing, they are not stringently monitored or universally set enough to be an acceptable component of an insurance settlement. In short, within the parameters of one of the real and completely verifiable instances of taking care of the environment, namely the monitored and highly structured environmental cleanups and restorations that are overseen by the insurance industry -- carbon offsets are seen as nothing but bullshit. This is not to say that they might one day be regulated properly enough, but as of today, it ain't happening.

All of you all out there who want to do your part to reduce your footprint, you go ahead and do whatever your conscience tells you to do.

But do it with correct information and not bullshit.

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Anyway, I guess, if you haven't already deduced this, YES, I do comprehend the fact that the people in charge of our city are a bunch of raving left-wing lunatics. I wish we had more balance from that direction.

Heh. Like THAT will ever happen.

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That's it. Have a good Tuesday.

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