For the record I have nothing against entertaining electron usage.

To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, God must love electrons since he made so many of them.

Cutting down trees enables new trees to grow. How is that increasing a carbon footprint? What have you done to enable trees to grow?

Kent's point, while perhaps rude, is certainly worth considering.

We all have actions in our lives in which we're either willing or unwilling to make concessions for the sake of the environment. I think it's fair to try to recognize the true costs of various decisions, and acknowledge that on some of the biggest impacts we're likely to have (how many miles we fly, how many kids we have, how many miles we drive) we may not be willing to make big concessions to the environment at the cost of other goals in our lives.

Doing so does not make us hypocrites. It simply makes us imperfect. And acknowledging our imperfections puts us in a better place to make the best conscious choices about what we care to do about them.

From this perspective, Kent's attack actually shines a light on two people who seem reasonably aware of their choices, and have clearly made many choices that are positive environmentally. So both of these individuals are on the path of conscious and deliberate decision-making - with the environment as a real factor in those choices.

We all have multiple competing interests in our lives. For some of us, caring for the environment factors as a very significant interest. Terrie and Jannette are very clearly among those.

GO

A well said post. Not much point in saving the environment for your great-grandkids if the only way to save it is by not having any kids. And not much sense preserving a piece of land for everyone's great grandkids if it is going to be locked away as a sort of shrine & nobody allowed to enjoy it...

There's no need for such a black/white stance. The choice on kids might be whether to have any, in which case you're still saving the environment for someone else's progeny, or it might be how many to have, as is probably the more common consideration.

Preserving the environment is really motivated by selfish reasons. Let's face it, we're gonna be a blip on the radar screen of the Earth, and Natural processes will wipe out the traces of our existence soon after we off ourselves. We are a mere hiccup in the lifelong health of our planet.

RR

Earth First....we'll log off the other planets later

When it comes to that sentiment, George Carlin said it best.

A great find oeno.

My point, lost along the way here it seems, is that driving and flying to pursue the luxury recreational activity of climbing is not environmentally caring or ecologically minded.

The base carbon footprint we all have, as Americans, is roughly 8.5 tons, according to an MIT study. That's the carbon footprint, per person, of all of our various government agencies. Beyond that we all, on average, contribute about another 11.5 tons, for a total of 20 tons. That's five times the world average of four metric tons of CO2 emissions, per person, per year.

No matter what rationalizations one proffers, it seems impossible to reconcile the idea of onself as an environmentalist, and the idea of contributing to emissions even more disproportionately, to play.

The many rationalizations offered: picking up garbage or cliff, voting for zoning laws, changing one's behavior in other ways, can all be undertaken without climbing.

So, if you're a climber, one who drives or flies to climb, and you accept the conclusions of the IPCC, and Gore's "moral imperative" argument, then you can't also call yourself an environmentalist, at least not without being a hypocrite. There just isn't any way around it.

I spoke with someone just the other day who totally rejected Gore's whole message because he's a hypocrite: one or more of the drivers associated with his traveling show was seen sitting in the vehicle with the engine on. (I know, Gore's Tenn. compound has huge utility bills. Nothing new here.)