And, speaking of the environment and carbon offsets and that ... stuff, what is the Vatican up to? A month ago they announced that the Vatican was going to be the first "carbon neutral" state. In order to achieve this the Vatican is going to plant trees in Hungary to offset the emissions and energy use in the Vatican.
Uggh. First of all, I love how they decided to plant their trees in Hungary, where I'm sure you can get more ... bark for your buck (can I claim credit for that one?) as compared with planting in Italy.
Secondly, how does this decision to be more carbon-neutral than thou make sense when the Vatican is about to launch a low cost airline for traveling to Lourdes and other holy sites. Shouldn't the Church be discouraging such trips if they're really committed to the environment cause? I know some people will talk about hypocrisy or whatever, but really this sounds like a great case of one hand not knowing what the other is up to.
It's probably not coincidental that the whole carbon offsets program sounds so much like the Church's old indulgences practice. I wonder if the Catholic Church's decision to go down the offset route was a simple case of nostalgia overriding thinking.
