Congratulations. Youâe(TM)re “carbon-neutral.” But youâe(TM)re still killing the planet.

It is such a wonderful thing to hear about extremely rich people with lifestyles that cannot truthfully be associated with anything less than extreme over-consumption, who are now jumping on the carbon-neutral bandwagon.

It doesnâe(TM)t matter whether you have one bachelor apartment and ride your bike everywhere, or own several mansions scattered around the globe with a private jet to take you to each at your whim; as long as you reach that environmental zenith of carbon-neutral, youâe(TM)re an environmentalist hero!

Prince Charles, who has just recently joined the carbon-neutral club is much more environmentally-friendly than I am, with his three mansions, tons of clothing, furniture, charter jets, private vehicles and thousands of other possessions at his disposal.

After all, he uses alternative energy, fuels his luxury car with gallons of cooking grease from the tons of food cooked in his mansions and pays penance for the rest of his over-consumption by spending $60,000 — more than I earn in a year — on planting trees to “offset” his carbon usage.

I, on the other hand, live in a small flat in a house with two other flats. I buy a modest amount of food: mostly grains, vegetables, and very little dairy or meat, and generally have very little left in my budget for buying trinkets or “stuff” after paying for basic needs like rent, phone, Internet access, transit passes (no car), child care and some small luxuries like the occasional visit to the movies or a dinner out.

So, unfortunately, I donâe(TM)t have a few hundred dollars in my budget to spend on offsetting my modest carbon usage by planting trees, or giving poor people in a village somewhere on the other side of the world fluorescent lightbulbs to replace their incandescents.

I guess that means Prince Charles has a much smaller impact on the earth than I do, right? Heck, heâe(TM)s even more environmentally-friendly than the aforementioned impoverished people living in villages halfway around the world. After all, their lifestyles arenâe(TM)t carbon-neutral. They arenâe(TM)t paying to have a tree or two planted to offset their use of incandescent lights in their one- or two-room shacks, are they?

Here is the bottom line: it doesnâe(TM)t matter how much good public relations the extremely rich get to try to trick the public into thinking theyâe(TM)re the environmental “good guys” who can lecture the rest of us working class Joes and Josephines about the environment from a position of moral supremacy.

The fact is, they consume so much that if every person on earth consumed what they did, we would need tens or hundreds of earths to sustain us.

So, what they are actually asking of you and me and the rest of the world is that we confirm their right to consume 20, or 50, or 100 times their share of the earthâe(TM)s resources, as well as their right to lecture the average working-class Northwestern resident about our consumption of perhaps two to 10 times our share of the earthâe(TM)s resources because they can afford their environmental yuppie tax (carbon offsets) much more easily than we can, and are therefore more likely than we are to reach that all-important carbon-neutral status.

They know that if they can make us buy into their philosophy that our more modest over-consumption is okay as long as we pay for it through carbon offsets, then they will get a free pass from us on their much more economically oppressive, earth-destroying behaviour.

Buying carbon credits does not change the fact that Prince Charles has emitted an astronomical 3,775 tonnes of carbon in the first place.

There is no getting around the fact that if everyone in the world was to consume as much as Prince Charles — or even the average North American — the world could not sustain us.

By letting the rich off the hook on their over-consumption and pretending that their carbon offsets make it OK, we’re perpetuating global inequality. As long as the rich feel free to consume many times their share of the world’s resources, the world’s poor will be left with a fraction of their share.

If we working-class over-consumers in the Northwest buy into the carbon-neutral philosophy, and become complacent about our more modest over-consumption as long as we pay for offsets, we will continue to make the rest of the world pay in extreme poverty for our excesses.

Carbon-neutrality may be the environmentalist-chic flavour of the week, but it is not environmental justice. It is eco-capitalism, and it is not going to save the planet.

Michelle Langlois

Michelle Langlois

Michelle is the editor of In Cahoots and is based in Toronto, Ontario. She has written articles and book reviews for rabble.ca, and occasionally produces videos for rabbletv.