Serf’s Up!

Megan McArdle pointed this one out. Please, go read her whole post, but here's an excerpt:

Carbon offsets have all sorts of problems. The methods used to calculate teh precise offset are often sketchy, and it's not clear to what extent offset carbon stays offset. Creating a market for greenhouse gas reduction may also have the undesireable effect of encouraging companies and governments to keep belching factories going until they can sell the offset, or even build new ones for the purpose of being paid to shutter them. But this is really something special. Upon original reading, I had thought that it must be taken out of context or otherwise misleading:

Go read it. Then watch the movie. Then read the description:

Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.

How it works
Every source of human energy will be different, and the number of applications are hugely varied. The example below is from our project in India promoting treadle pumps for irrigation, to replace diesel power.

Ever read Nikolai Gogel's Dead Souls? Gogel would have understood this project completely. McArdle calls it human hamster wheels. I think it is much worse than that.

UPDATE: Others: Andrea Harris, Atlanta Rofters, Instapundit, Profesor Bainbridge,

Other Links to this Post

1. Blue Crab Boulevard » About Those Jobs Americans Won’t Do — September 6, 2007 @ 10:11 am

2. Blue Crab Boulevard » Where Are The Real Environmentalists? — September 17, 2007 @ 5:10 pm