Green Action Drowns Polar Bear, Enjoys It
March 3, 2009
Studlife reported Monday that over the past weekend, thirty-five Wash U students (most of them members of Green Action) piloted seven vans to Washington, DC, to attend Power Shift, a national environmental lobby conference. According to Mapquest, Washington is 867 miles from St. Louis. That makes a round trip 1,734 miles, and seven round trips 12, 138 miles. For some perspective, that is 49% of the Earth’s circumference at the Equator. Green Action literally drove half way around the Earth to attend this conference. If the vans were getting 30 mpg (an unlikely figure indeed), the trip would have generated approximately 3.55 tons of CO2. I think I know what to get Green Action for the next gift-giving holiday. You might think I’m being too harsh, that although it smacks of hypocrisy, the lessons acquired at the conference probably outweigh the tons (!!!) of carbon Green Action generated. Perhaps… but I also happen to be on the Power Shift email list, and thus received an email from Power Shift organizer Jake Brewer informing me that I could watch the proceedings of the conference, live, “from the comfort of [my] laptop” at www.powershift09.org/live.
What sort of karma could possible atone for such hubris? Well, this is certainly a good start.
