More on the environ-mental note… (David, do you put the hyphen in to emphasise the ‘mental’ in the word? Nothing gets past me!) 
The Gauteng provincial government set up a scheme, encouraging delegates to the Earth Summit (governments and environmental groups alike) to pay into a novel fund to compensate for the pollution caused by flying to South Africa, using electricity and driving around. A remarkably free-market approach – a delegate travelling from the United States, for example, would pay about $100 to offset the 10 tons of carbon dioxide emitted by flying to and staying in Johannesburg.
The fund will put the money raised into environmentally friendly schemes ranging from solar water heating to tree planting and improving energy efficiency in buildings. The contributions to the fund were voluntary and only 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide had been offset.
What the environ-mentalists forgot, perhaps, that such voluntary contributions will also act as a signal about how credible, popular or appropriately priced such fund is. For who should know better than the environ-mentalists themselves just how deranged and pointless is their way of approaching the environment and its problems.
Amazing image by www.scrofula.com (click image)
Yes
I LOVE the “cars are great” banner at the bottom of this entry. Where did you find this?