DON SURBER:

Only 2 percent of India is air-conditioned versus 71 percent of the United States. India not only is further south but it has nearly four times the U.S. population.

Now would be a good time to make sure India gets its air-conditioning right to protect the planet.

Instead, we are worrying about what kind of light bulbs Wal-Mart sells.

He’s right. Compact fluorescents are swell — I’ve installed over a dozen now, and will have my house mostly converted soon as old bulbs burn out and I replace ’em with CFLs. But while this stuff is worthwhile, it’s not much in the great scheme of things, and the stuff that does matter gets less attention because it doesn’t fit the moralistic approach that global-warming activists have chosen to take.

That moralistic approach is also why Gore got slammed so much for hypocrisy. Carbon offsets (to the — unclear — extent that they’re non-fake) are a practical, rationalistic, capitalistic approach to a problem that has been defined in romantic, moralistic, apocalyptic terms.