Beautiful in and out

Are iPhone-wielding environmentalists preaching the moral high ground like the face of Olay anti-aging products talking about inner beauty?

It's tempting to make the comparison. Charges of hypocrisy are all around the environmental movement. Have you seen Al Gore's frequent flyer account?

But here's the point: We know environmental sainthood won't save the planet. You could try to mimic No-Impact Man all day long, and it wouldn't make a difference.

Yes, if you fly halfway around the world to preach to others about voluntarily flying less or composting the stems on your locally-grown, organic carrots, you may well fall into the hypocrite camp.

Activism of the kind that tells people to decrease their own carbon footprint, that gives you lists of ten things to do to save the planet, won't save the planet. It needs to be large-scale policy shifts.

Al Gore realizes that. Bill McKibben realizes that. Thandie Newton (who introduced Gore at Live Earth 2007), I hope, realizes that.

And there's no hypocrisy in flying halfway around the world to talk about wanting fundamental policy change that would make just that trip less carbon-intensive and, yes, more expensive.

So next time you see one celebrity introducing another telling us to do the right thing, remember that it's not about their or your personal footprint. It's about those footprints times a billion.