In Other News

Just to prove that all of the jerks are not running for office, Elsa Wenzel at CNet’s green blog tells us about ‘Carbon Belch Day’ promotes un-green actions

Smoke cigars, do a partial load of laundry, drink bottled water, and feel no shame. That’s what a campaign against a carbon trading bill is urging.

The latest parody of the proliferation of “green” social-networking sites and eco-friendly events comes via “Carbon Belch Day,” a campaign from the conservative Grassfire.org alliance that encourages people to pollute as much as possible on June 12.

So far, more than 140,000 people have signed a petition against “climate alarmism,” according to Ron De Jong, spokesman for Grassfire.org. If the effort attracts half a million people, it would lead to the release of 105 million pounds of carbon a week from this Thursday.

The effort is strong on shock value, yet weak on social networking and Web 2.0 tools, other than its “belch” calculator. There are no real-world events planned, so expect no sea of SUVs clogging freeways, other than the usual weekday bottlenecks.

The point, instead, is a political campaign to get people to oppose the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would establish a corporate carbon cap-and-trade system, but is already threatened by a promised White House veto.

But all is not lost because CNet also features a photo gallery and text of Code makers and breakers of WWII era.

If humans would expend the creativity and effort exemplified in these tools to actually solve some of our pressing problems, instead of trying to kill each other, there might be some hope that we won’t all be under water in a century.