GREEN FAKERS: Radar on why eco-hypocrisy matters:

Take Laurie David, soon-to-be-ex-wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry, and producer of An Inconvenient Truth and other save-the-earth extravaganzas. Though she boasts about using recycled toilet paper and compact fluorescent lightbulbs, David has been pilloried for, among other excesses, flying on private jets. Here’s what she has said in defense of her travel habits: “I’m not perfect. This is not about perfection. I don’t expect anybody else to be perfect either. That’s what hurts the environmental movement—holding people to a standard they cannot meet.”

Apparently, when you’re worth a few hundred million dollars, being asked to refrain from the most carbon-intensive indulgence known to man qualifies as “holding people to a standard they cannot meet.” Note, too, her use of emotional jujitsu: the ones who are really hurting the environment are the ones who are so impolite as to point out her bad behavior. . . . It’s always galling to be exhorted to curb your consumption by people who are living the poshest lifestyle imaginable. But the problem here goes beyond aesthetics. Eco-hypocrites undercut the very message they’re trying to peddle. How desperate could the planet’s plight be if the people who present themselves as most concerned about it consider flying first-class commercial an unacceptable sacrifice?

Read the whole thing. As I’ve said before, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.