Tuesday, January 6, 2009

An Inconvenient Environment


You're an environmentally responsible individual, so you do your best to live greenly and leave a small carbon footprint.  But making green decisions isn't always easy. Is it greener to walk, ride or bicycle or take the bus? Should you use traditional diapers or disposables?  Should you use paper or plastic?  Are you helping the environment when you plant a tree?  Think you know the answers?  Don't be so sure...you may not be as environmentally intelligent as you think.

Don't worry, RightKlik is here to help.  Let's get to the heart of the matter.  Environmental responsibility boils down to one thing: reducing your carbon footprint.  In the U.S. we produce about 7.5 tons of carbon per human being per year.  So what's good for the environment and what's bad?  Glad you asked:
  • Bad: Having children.  Another kid, another 7.5 tons of carbon per year.
  • Good: Abortions.  Fewer kids, less carbon.
  • Bad: Heterosexual marriage.  An ill-conceived institution that leads to increased carbon production through human population growth.
  • Good: Traffic accidents.  Destroying carbon-belching automobiles and their human drivers simultaneously...what could be better?
  • Bad: Health care.  Longer life equates to more carbon emissions.  Universal health care will be one of the biggest environmental tragedies of all time.
  • Good: Hurricanes.  Kills people, destroys their communities, and shuts down local economies...a big win for the environment.
Human beings are the number one source of man-made carbon emissions.  Want to get serious about reducing carbon emissions?  Drop dead!  Literally.  I'm not kidding.


Interesting Links: A Jumbo Pack!

Global cooling, global warming, pesticides, alar on apples, falling sperm counts from endocrine disrupters, cancer from power lines, cancer from saccharine, cancer from cell phones, cancer from computer screens, cancer from food coloring, hair spray, electric razors, electric blankets, coffee, chlorinated water…it never seems to end!  A good article for the worriers, hypchondriacs and environmental alarmists in your life. 

A new spin on centrifugal force.

A new spin on angular momentum.

Obama: We Must Act Now. Obama Tries to Build Bipartisan Support for Stimulus.  Everything comes with a price, Obama.  How much will our children pay for your ambitions? 

Funny Business in Minnesota...In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.
I fear this election season marks the sad end of American democracy as we know it. May the most merciful thug win!

We desperately need 600,000 New Federal Employees.

"What are you doing here?": man asks wife at brothel

The Reuters Fauxtography Scandal: A Taxonomy of Fraud

Keeping Cool with Coolidge.  We are entering a time when the American president is simultaneously the sole arbiter of good and bad in the universe, a fashion plate, a paparazzi-attracting celebrity and a pop art icon...

Stay childless and save the environment.


Global Swarming: Is it time for Americans to start cutting our baby emissions?

Calculate your impact with Al Gore's carbon calculator.  This is why he invented the Internet.

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’

7 comments:

Dan Trabue said...

The cutting our carbon footprint stuff above is funny. It CAN be difficult to know how best to live responsibly and acknowledging that can be funny.

As long as we don't try to make that humorous but wrongheaded thinking our public policy, that is.

After all, we can know generally what is healthy and what is not. It is obviously a good thing to walk more. It is obviously a good thing to eat less beef. It is obviously a good thing to drive much much less (or not at all, for some of us).

Public and personal policy can be an uncertain and imprecise science, but it's not brain surgery.

Anonymous said...

Good points, RK. Taking those views to their logical conclusions helps show how ridiculous they are. Did you hear about that lady who had an abortion specifically to help the environment?

Pasadena Closet Conservative said...

Made me laugh. I would show it to a few tree-huggers I know, but my New Year's resolution is to offend no more than 100 people a day. I reached my quota already.

-suitepotato- said...

The entire notion of a "carbon footprint" is ridiculous claptrap. What's next, a "methane footprint"? Advocating birth control for all lifeforms that can fart? Wouldn't that be a "methane buttprint"?

The worst thing we can do for our nation, our world, our species, is to let these addle-brained know-nothing hysterics abusing fools who treat vaguely scientific-sounding notions as tantamount to the central faiths of religious dogma beyond argument and twice beyond proof and disproof win the day without a knuckle-sandwich fight in the intellectual arena.

Given the chance, they will move from "environmental" crisis to crisis and by the time we realize how much power we've thrown into their hands willy-nilly we'll be so many crises in that we won't even remember the first of them.

Humble wife said...

Ouch I use 13.95 on Gore's table...I am evil and perhaps you will be in danger by having me comment. Funny thing was that I never fly(fly-aphobia after an engine failed on plane I was on...over Gulf of Mexico), use no propane, no natural gas, no heating oil for my home. I wonder how bad the rest of you evil carbon abusers are???

robert verdi said...

As the father of several children and a big fan of Southern Barbecue I find the whole thing comical.

RightKlik said...

DT: understanding brain surgery is probably easier to grasp at this point. Climatology is in its infancy.

4S: yes, some people are really demented.

PCC: My New Year's resolution is to offend at least 100 people per day. It's a fine line though. If I'm too offensive, I everybody goes away and then I don't get to offend anyone.

SP: good points. And what about your entropy footprint? I'd like to make a post about entropy and environmentalism, but it will be hard to make it interesting.

HW: if I remember correctly, I was about a 16. Yikes!

RV: Several children? Good for you. Hope they all turn out to be conservative.