Everyone Laugh @ Slate

Slate is at it again, proposing ways to reduce your carbon output. I've blogged about this before - the problem is that most advice is worthless when it comes to actual decision-making. As an example, consider Slate's advice that you wear more cashmere. That's great advice, except that goats are voracious consumers of plants, and tend to leave a denuded, dust-storm-prone desert in their wake. Or so I'm told. The point is, it's very easy to get one dimension right and another dimension horribly wrong. This is how we got MBTE and, if Yglesias is right, earthships.

[UPDATE: More embarrassment. "In fact, demand for organic cotton far outstrips supply—only 6,577 acres of certified-organic cotton were planted in the United States last year, less than 0.05 percent of cotton acreage overall."]