Oh dear, more ridiculous nonsense surrounding the alarm of the moment reported in this morning's issue of The Weekend Australian.
Guess what, somebody has figured out a scam to help separate the wealthy but worried from their money.
Concerned about the effects your cat's farts are having on global warming? Of course you are. Who wouldn't be? Or your four-wheel drive and the three interstate trips you take every year?
Well, now you can pay somebody to 'off-set' pussy's greenhouse gas emissions and you can sleep again. As Sally Treeby, from Sydney's affuent northern suburbs, says: "it was more gratifying than a new pair of shoes."
And there's the rub. It will have about as much effect on global greenhouse emissions as buying a pair of shoes.
What is always missing from articles of this kind is the single most important and relevant piece of information - what percentage of total global emissions have been cut.
Even if this money making venture takes off and the worried inner-city yuppies embrace it with gusto, the hard fact is that the percentage cut in greenhouse gases will be reckoned by a zero, followed by a decimal point and then some more zeroes, before any 'real' numbers start appearing.
Yes, such actions may be more 'gratifying' than that new pair of shoes, but that's it. The sole benefit will be another wealthy middle class white person feeling good about themselves.
Let's be clear about this, energy effecient light globes, solar panels of your roof and buying off-sets for your farts will make virtually no difference. Even if everybody did these things, the savings in emissions would still only be in the order of a percent or so.
Even poor silly George Monbiot admitted as much in New Scientist just a few months back.
But such is the madness being generated around climate change that even this kind of silliness is reported seriously and without any discriminating thought at all.
Climate change is real. Anthropocentric carbon dioxide must have some part to play in this, (though the extent of this is in fact still an open question), but these kinds of feel-good schemes are completely pointless and futile.
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"It will have about as much effect on global greenhouse emissions as buying a pair of shoes".
Not if those new shoes are cow leather.
Cow farts, according to studies recently completed by Robert Fisk, are 1,268% more powerful than cat farts and contribute, proportionately, that much more global warming to our fragile planet.
If the people who care about our planet were to start wearing more leather, as well as catskin hats, then perhaps we could all benefit sartorially and save the planet at the same time.
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