The once-a-year, feel-fuzzy-in-your-tummy Happy Hour is coming up again. Yes, let everyone in the world join hands and do our part in saving the world in this annual, all-out love-fest: Earth Hour is here! Turning off some lights for 60 minutes once a year is going to save our planet. Mayors of major cities across the world are happily jumping onto the bandwagon and turning off all city lights for an hour on March 28 (and leave all the lights on all night for the other 364.96 days a year).

So what are “we” doing all this for? “To Save The Earth”. To save the Earth? From what? Too much light? Turning off your lights for one hour really doesn’t do anything, except to highlight (or: lowlight)  the level of stupidity of people across the globe. Hey everybody, look at the 1 billion idiots! No, apparently, this hour long sit-in-the-dark thing is nothing more than a symbolic gesture. Whoop-de-do. That’ll teach all them energy wasters: we’ll sit here in the dark, while they are basking in the wasteful light. And that somehow convinces the energy-wasters to better their ways. This endeavor must be the worst idea since someone said ‘yeah, let’s take this suspiciously large wooden horse into Troy, statues are all the rage this season’. h/t

I’ve got news for you: I paid for the energy I use, it belongs to me, and I can do with it as I please: I can use it running my vacuum, I can waste it, throw it out the window, whatever. It’s mine. You’re gonna tell me how to wisely use my energy? Get lost! Go punch holes into walls with David Suzuki: I gotta say, I’ll tell you where I’d like to stick that caulking gun…

If it’s just a gesture, then don’t bother: gestures don’t do anything. Actions do. You can gesture all you want, until you actually do something nothing will change. First off, I don’t understand what exactly you’re even trying to change. We’re supposed to use less energy? Why? Einstein said there’s an infinite amount of energy in the universe, so there hardly seems to be a reason to conserve it. That’s almost, like, trying to conserve water, one of the most common elements on this planet. Why are we not conserving dirt? Or grass? There’s lots of that… And the best thing is, we’ll probably get a nice satellite picture showing us how many people participated in this nonsense, with nobody realizing that manufacturing and shooting up this satellite and taking pictures and sending them back to earth probably used up more energy than this whole stupidity is trying to save.

Here’s a thought for all you participants:

If you are so concerned about saving the planet, why would you wait until a once a year gimmick and turn off the lights for one hour, and not turn off your lights right now and leave them off? Oh, I see, you’re willing to give up something to save the Earth, but only for one hour. Not for any longer than that. After the hour, the lights go back on. We’ve got to be comfortable, after all. Oh, and we want to watch Survivor.

YOU’RE ALL HYPOCRITES! ALL OF YOU!

How does buying ‘offsets’ save the environment?

The press is complaining that the Conservatives are the only national party that didn’t buy any offsets for the flying around they are going to do during this election campaign. That makes them an environmentally unfriendly party.

I am concerned that ‘buying offsets’ is now seen as being “environmentally friendly”, and if you don’t buy them, you’re some sort of bastard who doesn’t care this planet is going to waste. Nobody has of yet been able to explain to me how buying offsets is cleaning up the environment. You’re still flying around the country. You’re still driving that car. You just feel better about it. I have written before in my blog, the majority of these carbon credit offset selling companies will plant a vague number of trees for this money. And that is only found out after prying: go visit any number of Carbon Credit companies, and you’ll be hard pressed to find what they are actually going to do with the money. They use vague terms like “We need to put back the trees that have been cut down” and “Change human behaviour” or “Offset: what you can’t reduce today with certified offsets “. After prying, for some companies it comes out to be about 20,000 trees per $1,000,000 worth of credits. It may sound like a large number of trees, but 20,000 trees is what one good tree planter can plant in about 10 days. And those trees would have been planted anyway (there are about 600,000,000 trees planted in Canada every year by the logging industry), but these 20,000 have found a sponsor other than the logging business: you. read more…

I don’t care what my carbon footprint is. I really don’t. And I don’t care about yours, or anybody else’s. “Carbon Footprint” represents nothing more than tons of money for a select group of people. Last year over $30 BILLION dollars of Carbon Credit Trading went to China, and for it, their emissions are going up, and up, and up… There are now numerous “companies” selling Carbon Credits. For $50, $100 or $200 you can buy “Carbon Credits”. Most of these “companies” don’t even suggest to try to let you know how this DONATION will shrink your “carbon footprint”. Most of them have vague terms, like “This purchase will offset your carbon”. Whatever that means. From www.zerofootprint.net when purchasing something called “Travel Offset”:

So before the guilt of visiting Grandma overwhelms you, take heart: there is a way to be responsible. Zerofootprint Travel Offsets are an ideal way of balancing out your air travel carbon footprint. Each Travel Offset is equal to one tonne of carbon removed from the atmosphere. Just purchase as many as you need to cover the carbon your flight creates.

And further on:

In 2006, our project developed over 200,000 tonnes of carbon credits in the District of Maple Ridge over an area of approximately 83 hectares, and involved the planting of over 25,000 indigenous Douglas firs, Sitka spruces, Western red cedars, Western hemlocks and cotton woods

So, if I may recalculate: ZeroFootprint sold 200,000 tonnes worth of Carbon Credits, and for it, it planted a grand total of 25,000 trees. At $10 per tonne, Zerofootprint made $2,000,000 dollars, and planted 25,000 trees for it. Planting trees with a reputable firm will cost you around $1 per tree. Not a bad profit there: $25,000 for trees, $2,000,000 in revenues, that’s a profit of 1,975,000 or 99%. And anybody who’s ever done any treeplanting would know, you could plant over 200,000 seedlings by yourself in a planting season. They claim they planted 25,000 trees in one year, which is exactly what one planter can do in about 10 days.

This year, they suggest to be planting 100,000 trees, so in keeping with their math, they sold $8,000,000 worth of credits. Not a bad business to be in!

Last year, in Canada, there were over 600,000,000 trees planted by the forrestry industry. 99.99% of them had nothing to do with carbon credits. They would have been planted anyway. Going through Zerofootprint, you’re spending good money to have 1/8 of a seedling planted per $10. If you were to go to a treeplanting place, you could have 10 trees planted for that money, but it doesn’t give you that same guilt-alleviating satisfaction of being able to say “I offset my carbon footprint today!”

In addition:  a tree is estimated to absorb 1 tonne of carbon per year over its 80 year growth period. After that, the tree lives hardly absorbing CO2 and then dies and rot releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. So, in other words, you’re only suspending the carbon for about 80 years. You’re not making it go away at all. In fact, you’re spending $10 per tonne to have your carbon stored in a tree for 80 years.

Your carbon output is not reduced, it is temporarily suspended.

And that is why I do not care what my carbon footprint is. I don’t go for these buzz-words that everybody uses to sound like they care. They can still fly and drive their big SUV’s mind you, because they ‘offset’ their ‘carbon usage’ by purchasing ‘carbon credits’. Sounds like a lot of hot air to me.

If you still want to know what my footprint is, you can find it up David Suzuki’s ass.