P.T. Barnum was wrong. There are hundreds born every minute.

From the Christian Science Moniter:

Americans try to shift into 'carbon neutral'

To combat global warming, many try to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they add to it.

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Are you living "carbon neutral" - or better yet, "carbon negative"? Have you gone on a "carbon diet"? Are you shrinking your "carbon footprint" on the earth or aiming for a "net zero" lifestyle?

If so, you've got lots of company, including celebrities, sports teams, airlines, moviemakers, tour operators, and at least one college. They're all trying to make sure that they're removing at least as much carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide, or CO2) from the atmosphere as they add from heating their homes or businesses or traveling by car or airplane.

I'm not even going to belabour the point that human emissions have EXTREMELY LITTLE TO NO effect on global climate. We'll see what the real reason for this is later in the article.

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Becoming "carbon neutral" involves two steps, environmentalists point out. The first is to reduce carbon emissions through familiar conservation measures: replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs, using public transit, and so forth. Many online "carbon calculators" help individuals or businesses assess how much carbon they are emitting.

But that only reduces their carbon emissions. To get to zero, they'll need to buy "carbon offsets" by sending money to projects that replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind-power generators, or to projects that remove carbon dioxide from the air, such as tree farms.

For example, a new business-class airline, Silverjet, plans to add a levy of about $26 to its transatlantic fares that will be sent to carbon-reducing projects to offset the carbon burned during the flight.

But some environmentalists worry that the idea of going "carbon neutral" could be detrimental if it leads to people only buying offsets and not changing their lifestyles.

"The concept of carbon neutrality is great. But it's one thing for people to do things to reduce their carbon emissions in their own lives; it's another thing for people to buy credits or offsets counting on someone else to clean up their act," says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming project. "It would be bad if it has the impact of creating sort of 'papal indulgences' that people feel that they're allowed to buy a gas-guzzling SUV or otherwise pollute in ways that they could avoid because they can pay someone else to plant some trees in Guatemala."

See my comments in previous blogs. Indulgences is exactly what they are. "Being green" is the newest religion.

"The past year has been tremendous," says Billy Connelly, part owner and marketing director of Native Energy of Charlotte, Vt., which sells carbon offsets. The level of public understanding about carbon emissions is much greater now than two to four years ago when the majority native American-owned company was just starting out.

"It's due in no small part to Mr. Gore's film," he says.

Yes, the Reverand Al, the high pontiff of the greens.

Native Energy invests in solar, wind, and biomass energy-generating projects that aim to "push coal-fired and gas-fired energy off the [electric] grid," Mr. Connelly says. In one native village in Alaska, he says, a wind turbine is replacing expensive diesel fuel that had to be flown in to make electricity.

The villagers have seen firsthand the results of global warming, he says. "The permafrost is literally melting beneath them."

So maybe they'll be able to have gardens now? Why is warmer always bad? Why is permafrost good? What do they use for power when the wind's not blowing?

Individuals who have bought carbon offsets from Native Energy include the Middlebury (Vt.) College ski team, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Clif Bar energy bars, and the Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies. The Dave Matthews Band has bought enough offsets, Connelly says, to make up for the carbon the group has emitted during its entire 15 years of touring.

See P.T. Barnum again. There's plenty of them with money, too, I guess.

Meanwhile, the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, is proclaiming itself to be the first such institution pledged to be carbon neutral. The college plans to offset all student and faculty commuting to campus and any other carbon emissions "caused by our existence," says college president David Hales.

The school's fleet of boats, for example, has been converted to burn only renewable biofuels.

Let's all switch to biofuels. Then we can use all that soy and corn for fuel instead of feeding all those pesky poor people in the third world.

Students are heavily involved on committees now researching how to determine the size of the college's "carbon footprint" and how to best buy carbon offsets. Whatever offsets are purchased must show that the projects they support have "quantifiable, verifiable" results in reducing carbon emissions, Mr. Hales says.

I would REALLY like to see those numbers. How do you verify the amount of carbon a tree takes up?

Trustees, alumni, parents, and donors back the carbon-neutral initiative, he adds. The school's pledge follows other environmental moves at the college. It already buys all of its electricity from a wind- powered source and held a "zero-waste" graduation ceremony last year.

Well, zero waste except for the paper the degrees were printed on. If this "science" is representative of the quality of the other programs at that school, they're of no worth at all.