Can You Smell It?

I made the mistake of emailing a few good wishes to Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the presidential candidate John Edwards, who is suffering from inoperable breast cancer. I should have just thought them in my head instead.

Edward's campaign has taken advantage of having my email address to send me an unsolicited missive imploring me to take a "personal carbon-reduction pledge."

As part of our Global Warming Action Month, I'm launching a personal carbon reduction pledge and asking everyone who shares our goal of ending global warming to take part.

Why do I suddenly feel like I'm at Bible camp without the warm, fuzzy, sexual tension?

How about this for an answer (as well as a tribute to the internet's salty right-wing souls): POUND SAND AND DIE.

The man has just had built a 28,000+ square foot super-mansion complex. I have a 1300 square foot tool shed into which I stuff my husband, two kids and my own lazy ass, and to which I refer with all irony as 'home'.

His energy plan (he claims) will reduce carbon emissions by 80%. But I don't think he intends to tear down his brand new crib. Maybe he's planning to level Al Gore's (although it only weighs in at a minuscule 15,000 square feet, it does consume slightly more than it's fair share of energy).

He also makes the claim (twice) that he is running a "carbon-neutral campaign." Does that mean he's walking to Iowa? He naturally fails to provide any specifics.

He is not short on rhetoric, though:

Americans are ready to be patriotic about something other than war. Americans are ready to answer this call. Will you be the first?

[link deleted]

Global warming poses a real and immediate threat to our nation. When faced with such grave threats in times past, generations of Americans have rallied together to make personal sacrifices big and small.

Now, the same is being asked of us. Today, the danger we face may be harder to find on a map, and our contributions may come in simpler forms. It may look like just installing energy efficient light bulbs, taking shorter trips in the car or turning down the thermostat, but make no mistake: These are acts of true patriotism.

Now I feel like some dumb chick being cajoled into putting out for a military fry cook. Are we actually being rallied with the soaring rhetoric that won our war against the Nazis, to use a specific type of light bulb? Are we fucking retarded? Can he cheapen patriotism any further? We're tired of hearing about the war. So let's forget about our the troops fighting the fascists in the Middle East (fascists who have no intention of reducing their carbon emissions) and patriotically turn down the thermostat. Now that's sacrifice.

Given the fact that he probably uses more energy in a day than I use in 6 months, I think I can call him unpatriotic by his own standards. And I'll admit that it's not often someone is stupid enough to let that happen.

Seriously. This whole thing is the environmental equivalent of dodging the draft. Can son-of-a-mill-worker Edwards be so out of touch with the rest of humanity that he thinks we won't call him on his outrageous personal energy consumption? Or worse, are the most bitter and cynical of right-wing pundits correct in that he is hoping his wife's cancer will buy him a pass on that?

I don't think John Edwards could disgust me any further. But after reading this steaming pile of greenhouse gasses, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.