I must confess, when I first learned about carbon offsets, my B.S. detector began to sound off like the overheat warning at a nuclear power plant: AH OOO GA! AH OOO GA! AH OOO GA!

Carbon offsets, for those who have not caught up on the terminology of the environmentally sensitive, are a currency in guilt. You increase your carbon footprint by, say, using your hot tub twice in one week or running your hair dryer on high, you feel guilty for destroying the planet — but now you can buy-off the guilt and save the planet by purchasing a carbon offset.

"Hey Tipper - Have you seen my ham & cheese offsets?"

The seller of the offset goes off somewhere and plants a tree or promises to ride his bicycle to work and you are now carbon neutral. Your guilt is gone, the planet is saved and you feel great.

Al Gore demonstrated this concept nicely when it was discovered that the Guru of Global Warming was burning 20 times the average American’s fuel usage to power just one of his three homes.

Al didn’t have to stop heating his pool. Tipper didn’t have to shut down the treadmill in the gym. They didn’t have to turn down the A/C. They didn’t have to turn off the TV in the servants’ quarters.

Al’s a shrewd guy and had anticipated all of this fuss regarding his extraordinary large carbon footprint (good thing for Gore carbon is not measured in belt size) and had conveniently gone out 3 months earlier — although years after he had begun work on An Inconvenient Truth — and purchased enough carbon offsets to where he could declare himself carbon neutral and guilt free.

The world cheered and the planet was saved — even when it was discovered that the carbon offsets were purchased from Al’s own carbon offset company — Generation Investment Mgt. (GIM)

The best part is that Al never had to cut back on anything. He could continue to produce CO2 at a prodigious rate and still be a hero — simply by purchasing carbon offsets from himself!

What a system! Gore may have invented the Internet, but this guilt offset thing is much bigger. Think about the possibilities.

Want to beat your wife? No problem, just purchase some wife-beating offsets from a women’s abuse center. Drink too much? Buy a booze offset from Alcoholics Anonymous. Steal from your employer? The honest guy in the next desk has grand theft offsets for sale.

Whatever planet destroying, anti-social, dishonest or glutinous behavior you wish to indulge in — just do it — and buy a guilt offset later. If you are really slick, like Al, you’ll figure out a way to buy them from yourself — an energy saving maneuver that further reduces your carbon footprint, and, as with Al, your credibility.

— Editor