Letters to the Editor

• Another whiny yuppie heard from

  [Read the article: Shopping for carbon credits]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Maybe Ms. Ellison could hook up with the guy from Cary's latest column (who has a perfect perfect life, but still obsesses about what could go wrong with his 4 year old) -- they'd have a lot to talk about.

  It's interesting that the most suffering and complaining about the environment comes from the richest segment of American society, the very people who will never suffer from high gasoline prices or shortages, because they can spend spend spend their way to happiness (like the guy with the Hummer sticker, LOL).

  Why on earth DOES Ms. Ellison drive four blocks rather than using an umbrella? I have no idea. As a kid I walked to school about this distance, and my parents NEVER drove me, in any kind of weather and we lived in the worst part of the Midwest (brutal snowstorms, 3 feet of snow, etc.) unless I was sick or something. Kids are healthy, tough and resilient, and for a kid, walking in the rain with an umbrella is FUN (for one thing, they wouldn't be worrying about frizzy hair or anything like that).

  Ms. Ellison probably has a house full of useless gadgets like the aforementioned "coffee frother" that remain plugged in, gulping energy, and rarely used. I have a friend with a stainless steel, six-burner commercial stove ($$$$$) and she literally never cooks. Ditto for the huge Subzero refrigerators, Jacuzzi whirpool tubs and so on. I'll bet my last nickel that the Ellison household has all of these, yet they are prostating themselves before the altar of "Carbon Credits" and "Environmentalism" because Mr. Ellison drives...yes, a PRIUS! Yup, that makes up for all the excess consumption! The 2000's version of a Medieval hair shirt, the PRIUS. If you have one, then you are absolved of all sins, the energy guzzling appliances, the airplane trips to Fiji, the Yuppie clothes manufactured in the third world by child slaves -- none of that counts cuz you drive a PRIUS.

  Never mind that you probably overpaid thousands of dollars to get this desirable status symbol, that it doesn't really get anything close to 62 MPG, and that it runs off an expensive battery that is designed to fail at 100,000 miles, at which time it will cost more than the value of the car to replace, which will require that the car be hauled to the junkyard, creating a ton or so of unreclaimable waste. Nice.

  BUT IT'S A PRIUS!!!

  For what it is worth, I work at home and so I get to see the "recycling trucks" come by every Thursday in my neighborhood. Most all of my neighbors in this liberal suburb are heavily into recycling, different colored plastic bags, paper sacks filled with yard waste and all. But only I get to see the sanitiation workers indiscrimately throw most of it into the same trucks and take those expensive paper yard waste sacks and empty them into giant receptacles and then throw the bags away. In other words, IT IS ALL FAKE and a TOTAL WASTE OF YOUR EFFORTS.

  If Ms. Ellison wants to make a real difference, she could stop taking luxury vacations to foreign countries. But of course, she won't do THAT. She could get rid of her SubZero and Viking range and get ordinary kitchen appliances....oh but that wouldn't look very nice with her granite countertops and imported ceramic tiles and Corian everything.

  She could also buy an umbrella and stop driving her spoiled lazy kid everywhere. Wait a sec -- it's her husband who has the Prius, so what the heck is she driving the kid in? Oh wait -- her Hummer. Her environmentally sound Hummer that she HAD to buy, cuz it was the only safe car to ferry her precious spawn around in, and that's why she's so obsessed with buying energy credits to make up for it.

  Ms. Ellison, since you have $4-5 hanging around each month, and you have no better use for it than to THROW IT AWAY, can I suggest you send it to me? Believe me, I can think of plenty of things to spend it on, and I don't even have a "coffee frother", so maybe if you sent me the money you don't need, I could buy one.

  Permalink Monday, July 2, 2007 07:39 AM