Hypocritical?

I know that it's hypocritical to preach what you don't practice. I am trying not to preach, but just to record what I am practicing.

I want to make it clear that I have a huge carbon footprint. Last year I flew a lot. I'm afraid to do the calculations.

I live in a city where all the best jobs are in the oil industry, in a province where a large part of the public dollar comes from the sale of oil and gas. My own comfort is based on the continued well-being of the oil and gas industry.

Having said all that, here I am trying to make some changes to cut down my carbon footprint. Is that hypocritical?

I don't know. Maybe it is. But you know what? Two wrongs don't make a right.

If we all stopped trying to make a good change because it would be hypocritical of us, where would that lead us? I am less afraid of being called a hypocrit than I am of living through a world-wide drought and all the other horrors of continued global warming.

A reply from the David Suzuki Foundation on carbon offsets

Thanks to Paul Lingl of the David Suzuki Foundation who replied to me today on the question I had about buying carbon offsets. (See my earlier post, "I flew. Now what? George Monbiot vs. David Suzuki and the "carbon offsets" question"). Like Monbiot, it turns out that the Suzuki people also have concerns about carbon sequestration. They prefer other approaches to carbon offsets.

Their website has links to the carbon offsets the Suzuki people consider to be good. I infer that all carbon offsets are not created equal.

Further exploration of carbon offsets to follow. There is a lot of information on the Suzuki Foundation's website. I'm almost afraid to start using their free carbon calculators to see how bad I've been, but avoidance is no solution. It's not about what I have done in the past, it's about what I do now and in the future.