Environmentalists who don't get it...

Now please don't get me wrong, if the world is getting warmer, and not in a good way, we are in the shit, and I'm all for doing everything I can to stop it. I'll recycle, I'll use public transport (however uncomfortable it is) and generally I'll behave in a way that is better for the world. 

Environmentalists will preach to you about this and that and often what they say is all well and good, but there is an unfortunate subspecies. These environmentalists (emphasis on the mental) are preachier and more holier than thou than the average, and yet, for all their good intentions, they screw it up. The most minor of these inflections is in the buying of a Toyota Prius. These things shout about their owners environmental credentials. They say, "I am better than you, my car uses less fuel". Problem is that those cars have a carbon footprint larger than that of the average car purely from their manufacture, how green is that? Well using complimentary colour theory, well I think it's red. What's more, if Top Gear is to be believed, if you drive it in a less than entirely gently way it's less economical fuel wise than an M3 driven at the same speed, I don't care how unscientific the experiment was, it still says something...

There is another breed, even more mental, as seen on a recent episode of Grand Designs. These people built an entirely environmentally friendly house, so environmentally friendly that they sunk it into a cliff chopping out a chunk of the natural environment in the process. They lit great chunks of this house using natural sunlight, problem being, this is Britain, where it isn't particularly sunny for a lot of the time, meaning that the house was largely bathed in a dim gloom, wholly and entirely unpleasant to live in, but these people in their oblivious piety would not make any concessions to make their lives more livable, or even admit, to a mildly bewildered Kevin, that it could possibly be less than nice experience. Finally these people chose to drive around in an ancient and particularly smoking 2CV, and while one of these is better than a Prius for the environment, it's still toddling around in an excessive cloud of it's own greenhouse gasses that wouldn't be there if they bought a car that was made since the last ice age.

As I said, its up to all of us to do what we can to keep our planet from disaster, wether or not global warming is fact (I have friends who would very convincingly dispute it's reality, who just happen to be rocket scientists). It's also good to do what you can to make others do what they can. It's not good to become an evangelist, however, if all you're going to do is screw it up with your own idiotic choices, because quite frankly I'm less than likely to do anything you suggest.