Smug Alert!

We attended another Earth Day festival, this time in Albuquerque's charming Nob Hill business district. Since Jon is now working for Edible Santa Fe Magazine, it was a great opportunity to hand out some free issues and talk to vendors at the festival about advertising.

However, once again, we were "smugged"! This time, by a girl working the carbon offset booth. As Val was walking by, the smugger asked if Val would like to donate money to offset her carbon footprint. As Val politely said "not today, thanks!" the smugger proceeded to follow her through the crowd, insisting that just a $1 donation could offset 200 driving miles in a 4-cylinder vehicle. Val retorted that she rarely drives (as we live in the country, work from home, and share a car!), and the smugger continued pursuing her almost angrily, shouting "well, you still release carbon in other ways!"

It reminded us of an episode of South Park we ironically watched the evening before we moved to New Mexico, about a "smug cloud" emanating from San Francisco as the result of a self-righteous George Clooney environmental speech, and which was dangerously heading toward a similar cloud over South Park, Colorado. If the two clouds collided, it would cause a "smug storm" the likes of which we've never seen! The South Park cloud resulted from citizens switching over to hybrid cars and feeling very self-satisfied for doing so, thank you very much. In the episode, Stan makes it his mission to stop the clouds from colliding--or at least to get his friend Kyle out of San Francisco, where his parents moved him so they could inhale their own farts to offset their carbon footprints....

Here's a terrible but quick cut of the episode we found on YouTube:



It's so true. If we're not careful about self-righteousness and badgering others with our ideas of environmental responsibility, there will be a backlash. Why can't we all just be reasonable?!?