Carbon Offsets

So, you're a fantastically wealthy liberal, you've got four lavish mansions scattered across the country, and a beautiful, shiny private jet to get around between them without having to wait in line and get on an airliner with all the riff-raff.

Being a liberal, you're awfully concerned about this phenomenon known as Global Warming, and resolve to use your shiny private jet to go to speaking engagements around the country, warning the unwashed masses about the coming crisis, imploring that we all cut our energy consumption.
Unfortunately, just one of your mansions uses about twenty times the energy of a typical American household, and that jet you love so dearly will use more fuel in one cross-country trip than Joe Blow's car will all year.

Now, you don't want to get rid of all your pretty things, but you do feel just a teensy bit guilty about your consumption, especially given the subject of your latest crusade. You can assuage most of those twinges of conscience by reassuring yourself that the important "work" you do telling the proles about energy waste justifies that private jet and those monster mansions, but you still can't quite meet your own eyes in the mirror. So, what to do?

Solar panels on the roof of the house? Please! Those black monstrosities look positively ghastly!
Compromise and fly first class? Uh, no thanks. That's just a little too plebeian. You might actually rub shoulders with some of those unwashed oiks in baggage claim. Ewww.

Wait! There's the solution! Carbon Offsets! Just throw a chunk of money that way and you can proudly announce that you're truly living a carbon-neutral lifestyle! Wow! You really are practicing what you preach!

What are Carbon Offsets, you ask? Well, they're a way to offset your energy consumption. One example would be for every x gallons of jet fuel you burn, you send enough money to Hippie Joe's Green Conservancy to plant y number of trees. See? Easy! It just takes money, and all that guilt is just washed away.

Except it's just so much crap. If you truly care that much about the environment, why wouldn't you conserve in your own life as well as pay to plant more trees, or pursue alternative energy sources? You're still pulling the same load off the electrical grid, but it's OK now because you paid some joker to plant a few trees in Costa Rica? Please.

By adding this price tag, "egalitarian" liberals would just make it harder for your average joe to get that larger, nicer house. This is what truly disgusts me about the left. I don't begrudge them their nice things, it's their money and I'd do the same if I had that scratch, but the sheer NERVE they have to turn around and scold us because we don't have a Prius yet just turns my stomach.

"It's alright for me, buddy, but not for you" is truly the motto of the American Left.