SJ,

I'm really confused about the point you are trying to make. It sounds like you're saying that if you prefer to drink tap water instead of bottled water you shouldn't be drinking any other bottled beverages, participate in any sort of travel and live a completely green lifestyle.

Is that correct?

So it's your thinking that in order for Obama to be green with integrity, he should not fly, drive, drink any beverage out of bottles ever... I find that to be extreme thinking. Drinking bottled water is not necessary in Hawai'i, the water is fine. Using a plane to get to Hawai'i is necessary.

Obama is trying to change people's thinking about green issues. This is a small step. Gavin Newsom did a smiliar thing, getting people who work in his building not to drink bottled water. In that case, I don't know if I agree with him because the water in SF doesn't taste good to me.

Do you have a magic fairy wand that will let us snap our fingers and make all pollution-generating technology disappear and be replaced with non-polluting?

It's absurd to ask the world to come to a stop while we figure sh*t out. Things still need to get done and it unfortunately still takes burning fossil fuels to do it. So you do the best you can with what's available now. What more can you ask for?

GD, I want a magic fairy wand.

No. Not at all. What I am saying is that Obama is polluting....more than most anyone else.....his reasons for polluting are valid and I don't expect him to stop flying or drink only tap water, etc.....but that does not change the fact that he does pollute a lot more than most.



Exactly.

So just because he is required to pollute in one way completely invalidates his efforts to pollute less in other ways?

Try again.

ETA: Or, to put it another way, "I'd better not try to improve my driving habits and use less gas because the food I buy is trucked across the country and that uses gas, so it's not environmentally sound to use less gas myself."

Or it is like making fun of somebody for drinking Diet Coke with their supersized lunch at McDonalds.

Since part of your meal is bad the assumption is that there's no reason for the rest of it to not be.

Not completely, no.

I suppose if an arsonist brought along a squirt gun to the scene of his next crime we should applaud his foresight.


(and no, I am not, in any way, comparing a good man like Senator Obama to someone like an arsonist...just an analogy I pulled out of thin air)

I do this....but what the employees at McDonads don't see is that I throw away half or more of the fries and discard the top bun off my Filet Fish(still bad for me, but not as bad as it could be).

It's not as if Obama is hopping in a jet to go joy riding. He's engaging in what's necessary to do what he's trying to do. If there were a way to do so without burning jet fuel, I'm sure he would. But that's an impossibility. That doesn't mean he's not making an effort to be responsible about the decisions he does have control over.