When "important figures" fly around with their entourages, emitting immense amounts of carbon dioxide as they do so, are they exempt from the moral resources calculations in some way, because they are doing good?
What if their message could be conveyed by more energy-efficient means, such as hi-definition videoconferencing?
Is it enough to buy "carbon credits" when there is a reasonable alternative to physical travel?
I'm thinking of Al Gore, the IPCC conferences, and YearlyKos as examples that might have a little moral bite for liberals.
Are we serious, or just talking the game?
I just watched a television ad, with little kids in various "interesting" places, such as the LA river's concrete spillways, with a television sitting on the ground with earnest older people telling the kids the "reasons" we didn't deal with global warming, and apologizing for being so morally deficient. Powerful ad.
My response is to ask these questions here. Are we really thinking about this in an effective way, or are we throwing up convenient defenses to the Inconvenient Truth?
There is a deeper question here, hard to formulate in a manner that avoids triggering powerful defensive responses that block sound reasoning behind a wall of protective lies.
That question lies in the word "smug." At Channing, a discussion group that's been meeting for thirty or so years in Berkeley, it came up in the following form, from a quiet gentleman who usually listens but doesn't talk much.
He asked "Why do you concentrate so much on the negative aspects of American life?
Are we not, in many ways, a beacon of how life should be on this earth?
On the balance, do we not act as an example to the world of how life should be lived?
Doesn't freedom include the right to enjoy whatever benefits we can for ourselves and our family, for this short time we are on the earth?"
It was plaintive, heartfelt, and honest in its presentation. He acknowledged that the America Dream may have been built on resource extraction and domination of the tribes we found on "our" desired resources, and that hard tactics may have been used to get those resources, but his question then turned to "how much do we have to give back as compensation that will do no good?"
His underlying assumptions seemed to involve some moral balancing between the "rightness" of American behavior now, somehow excluding the idea that good could be done by remedial behavior, because (as Wolfowitz famously said) "those Third World governments are so corrupt that the money they get from resources is just wasted on conspicuous consumption."
A quick response might be quivering at your fingertips, but hold!
In my morally-neutral questioning mode of thinking, I had to concede a basic element of his thinking: some resource usage is more morally valuable to the human race than others.
Once you get past the obvious waste in so much American lifestyle entertainment, the easy ones like NASCAR racing, private swimming pools, five acre lawns, and such, you end up with things like visiting family across the country, having a big car because you've got a big family, and having a big house so each kid can have a separate bedroom, so they won't fight, and they'll have more privacy.
Which of the psychological benefits of energy consumption are morally exempt? Is driving to Yosemite worth it? Is driving up to Napa to get an expensive but much-loved wine worth it?
Children are starving in China. Eat your peas.