 I can appreciate that Cheryl Crow was trying to be funny and otherwise raising awareness around global warming with the comment about ‘one square per use’, referring to toilet paper. However, I think that the humor disguises a real hypocrisy among the rich and famous. It’s okay for Cheryl Crow and Al Gore to request compromises among the general public in their consumption of fuel, electricity, water, and toilet paper. However, these are sacrifices to be made by everyone else. It is okay that Cheryl and Al travel the world in private jets and consume 20 times the average American home’s electricity in their private residences. It’s not, however, okay for anyone else. This approach is pure rubbish. Al Gore’s spokesperson states that the Vice President ‘purchases carbon credits’ to offset his personal consumption. This is complete nonsense and further illustrates my point! Purchasing carbon credits is not equivocal to conservation. It is simply an excuse that is acceptable among the rich and famous. The practice of purchasing carbon credits doesn’t mean a thing because it is not a wide enough practice. Even if it were, it is not equivocal to actually saving where you can – buying an airline ticket and riding with the masses, using less electricity and water because you can (and should). They are attempting to tell the general public that if you are rich or famous that you can simply disregard conservation and ‘buy carbon credits’ and that this is the same as what the masses are doing in their REAL conservation efforts. I am not saying that one cannot fly around in a corporate jet, drive a 1965 Cadillac, or put up stadium lights in your yard so your kids can play baseball all night long. I am just saying that we should stop making exceptions and call waste what it is, ‘Waste!’.
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