Happy New Year. I've been reading one of my Christmas presents: The Economist's Book of Isms by John Andrews. From Abolutionism to Zoomorphism, and beyond, this casts an informative eye on 400+ of these constructs. Carbon neutralism isn't in the book, but perhaps it should have been. It might be defined as a tendency to think that if you spend a small bit of extra money, giving it to some pious-sounding outfit that promises the Earth, you can pretend that you never really generated all that CO2 in the first place, and carry on regardless.
Actually, I thought I'd made carbon neutralism up, but this isn't so. Damn – a bad start to 2011! I was moved to this (would-be) neologism by looking at the Sydney New Year Fireworks website which is full of direct moral instruction about travel, drinking, smoking, eating, etc. The company that makes the fireworks (Foti – is also CN, it seems, although their website keeps pretty quiet about this). Director, Fortunato Foti even claims that they use biodegradable paper. Well, there you go. As I said: Happy New Year.
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