The high cost of environmental guilt trips

Washington Post:

This is strange territory. The Dow is down. Wall Street needs a bailout. But in the Washington area and across the country, there is still a bull market in environmental guilt.

Sales of carbon offsets -- whose buyers pay hard cash to make amends for their sins against the climate -- are up. Still. In some cases, the prices have actually been climbing.

In other words, when nearly everything seems to be selling for less, thousands of individuals and businesses are paying more for nothing, or at least nothing tangible.

Experts say this is possible, in part, for economic reasons: The financial crisis has not yet reached those upper-middle-class consumers who are willing to pay $12 to offset a cross-country flight, $80 for a wedding or $400-plus for a year of life.

But there is also a cultural factor, the legacy of a complicated decade defined by a "green" awakening and a national splurge in consumer spending. Many people have learned to pay to lessen their climate shame -- and, at least for now, they don't think of it as a luxury purchase.

...

Environmental guilt trips are sort of like sin taxes or payments to the church of global warming. I have noticed that several of the comments I get when I write something critical of the environmental movement relate to religion some suggesting that my opinions are some kind of religious sin. I, of course, reject that. I think Earth worship is in fact a sacrilege in the form of idol worship. My recollection is that some of the Greek and Roman idols were based on Earth worship.

This is not to say they I believe one should foul his own nest. It makes more sense to keep ones property in order and clean than it does to pay penitence because of some guilt trip. Those of us who oppose the radical environmental movement don't want dirty water and dirty air either, but we are not willing to destroy the things that make life better to embrace their radical schemes. The radical environmental movement's hatred of energy in all forms would create a world in which one could not light a fire to prepare food or warm our homes.