Offsets

I started thinking about offsets yesterday. Why are they just for carbon? In case you don’t know, offsets are when you pay to plant a couple trees everytime you fly or drive to make up for messing up the air.

We could have water offsets—you drink a gallon or two and a clean bottle of water gets shipped to the very poor, who up to now only had river water to drink. Maybe a better offset is a deep well for every couple hundred long, hot showers.

Then there could be cow offsets. Cows waste corn (actually cows don’t waste—they clean their plates—but growing cows takes a lot of corn, so cows are wasting world agricultural production). If you eat couple cowburgers—then you pay for a bag of corn to go to the hungry. Or maybe a plow. You get the idea.

I could go on and on, but the idea of offsets is to have wasteful folks make up for their using too much stuff. Maybe these folks will slow down a little in their wasting, but even if they don’t, the world gets a little fairer.

Offsets can make a lot of business for poor places. After all, it’s no secret that the people who don’t have much stuff to waste are usually the poor ones. They could get paid for digging the wells and growing the corn. Paid with offset-bucks.

Some friends have suggested the population offset. I don’t agree with this one. (They call it the “pop-off”). Some relative (usually pretty distant) must be offed when you add to your family. That really would add to family tensions. And if you had to off someone outside the family then that leads to wars and similar badstuff. We off enough people around the world already.

But what really set me thinking about offsets—was getting up on the wrong side of the bed. I yelled at the kids and kicked the dog first thing this morning.

A cup of coffee later I realized what I had done. I could have appologized, but that’s too easy (that’s what the kids say and the dog still growls). But if I could explain that I bought a grump-offset to along with the apology then, I think, things would be better.

(I used to give presents with my apologies about yelling, but the kids have too much stuff already and the dog is too fat from the dogbiscuits,—I hope you see the problem with making things better with more stuff to the already stuffed. It just leads to the spoiled-baby syndrome) .

What would a grump-offset be? There are people who are always angry, sulky, testy, and generally ill-tempered that I could pay, sort of like planting trees, but planting smiles on their faces. They could be kinder, friendlier after being the recipient a reasonalby-priced grump-offset. Maybe 25 of their smiles would cost me a buck.

Since the poor tend to have more to be angry about, there could be a whole new line of work for the laid-off, the unemployed, and generally poor.

Of course this could leave the rich more ill-tempered than ever. But it’s worth a try.