Pirate's Cove

Finally, a greenie weenie (read: uber climate alarmist) is attempting to comply with the life the Warmists want everyone else to live. And finding out that it’s, well, not easy

(Grist) I’ve become quite the calorie-counter lately. With the holiday season upon us, I’m really tightening my belt, carefully calculating the number of calories I’d consume from all kinds of daily choices and sniffing out ways to trim the buggers from my diet. Like many a calorie-counter before me can attest, it’s frustrating work. Of course, by “calorie,” I mean “pounds of greenhouse gas” and by “consume,” I mean “emit into the atmosphere.”

Forgive me for the diet-speak, but perhaps you’d understand if you were hauling around a load of excess carbon like I am. After traveling from Seattle to far West Texas last month, I’ve vowed to personally offset the emissions created by the trip through my own lifestyle changes. The trip was the atmospheric equivalent of a month-long coconut-cream-pie binge, saddling me with an extra 1,858 pounds of greenhouse gases. They say weight loss is best and most sustainable when it’s done gradually, but boy, at the rate I’m going, I won’t get rid of this jiggle for years.

Well, then, perhaps avoiding unnecessary fossil fueled flights would be in order…you had to take the trip? It was a wedding? You couldn’t just send a card? Man, living a modern life sucks, eh?

Getting my public transportation on has paid bigger dividends, but damn, you’d better have gobs of free time to really make this work. Hopping the bus downtown is no biggie, but you’re at the mercy of the transit schedule anytime you want to venture farther afield. Take my trip to a nearby state park for mushrooming a few weeks ago. In order to make a 10:30 a.m. start time, I left the apartment at 8:06 for my downtown bus. Once there, I had to wait around for almost an hour to transfer to the regional bus out to the eastern suburbs. Even then, the bus dropped me a mile from the park, adding a brisk walk to the mix. Repeat it all in reverse to get me home again. I spent five hours in transit in exchange for what would have been 40 total minutes of driving.

Bummer. I spent 30 minutes driving….what takes me 30 minutes in my gas guzzler, which put out less CO2 than that bus.

But of the weight I’ve lost so far, the most hard-won was the pathetic 1.7 pounds I earned by taking my cat to the vet without a car. I know what you’re thinking — brilliant, right? The bus ride wasn’t so bad. It was the 10 blocks I had to walk, in the rain, clutching a carrier housing a very upset and soon-to-be-diagnosed-as-obese kitty to the vet’s office. People poked each other and laughed as I passed, bedraggled and with aching arms, amidst a chorus of angry meows. Post-appointment, I muttered, “Screw it,” and hailed a cab.

Somehow, I doubt most people are willing to make the changes to have to deal with this kind of idiocy, and will generally say “screw it” from the get go. The obvious answer? Screw everyone

There are those who question the point of this exercise to begin with. “Why make your life harder when it won’t make a difference anyway?” they ask, adding a virtual eye roll that would make even the most jaded 14-year-old proud. “Policy is the only solution to the world’s climate crisis, not individual action.” To them I say: Well, yeah.

There you go: make everyone miserable and inconvenienced via government regulation passed by people who will exempt themselves.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.