By Christine Hardin Santa Monica
Buying carbon off-sets is a great idea, unless of course you live in the direct vicinity of the Santa Monica Airport. Somewhere, out there, an acre of trees is planted and that helps us locally? If only it could be that easy. Let’s consider, if you could only enjoy your back yard “between flights,” if you needed to quickly close your front door and wait for the fumes to dissipate before leaving for work in the morning, if you needed to get back home (inside) from walking your dogs before the first large jet takes off at 7 a.m., would carbon offsets do the trick for you? All these “lifestyle modifications” are necessary so that we can protect ourselves from the toxicity of the jet fumes. I don’t think it matters to anyone in my neighborhood how many carbon off-sets the pilots and passengers will purchase. We can’t purchase our way out of every environmental problem we create.
The only way to cancel out the greenhouse gas emissions from the worst offending flights is to cancel those flights from our tiny municipal airport or in the very least, limit the number of flights to a degree that will make Santa Monica a “livable city” for all of its residents. Ideas are great, but that doesn’t change the reality of what we are dealing with daily. Let’s not pat ourselves on the back for having an idea too soon. Let’s act now to reduce or eliminate these large jets.
Santa Monica has never been short on great ideas. What we need now is a real solution to a real problem, not a publicity campaign to celebrate ourselves.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 16, 2008. Read the original PDF.