Column: A carbon footprint the size of Sasquatch

I recently read a news story that stated Washington was lagging behind in its use of biofuels – the gas that has a certain percentage of oil made from plant-based materials.

Three years ago, Gov. (and South County gal) Christine Gregoire signed into law a requirement that biofuels would account for 20 percent of state vehicle and ferry fuel consumption by June 2009. The latest figures show that state cars and boats fueled up with a paltry 3 percent. Holy Canola, that’s a big difference.

One of the main reasons?

An issue to which we all can relate: the cost at the pump.

While Gregoire hunkers with her administration to figure out a fix, I’d like to impart how this issue mirrors another one, closer to home.

How many of us can actually afford to go green?

Realize you’re reading the words of someone whose second-to-last car had the carbon footprint of Sasquatch.

I drove a geriatric Toyota Camry that essentially changed its own oil. Fixing the leak would have cost more than selling the thing for scrap and replacing it with a skateboard.

I’m sure environmentalists would have been appalled, knowing I actually drove the thing, feeling little to no remorse about it. I couldn’t afford anything else, and my offspring had this annoying habit of needing to be driven to school.

But I really came to see the divergence in logic when I was at a social function with a group of people, obviously in a higher income bracket, who were amazed I didn’t have the latest in an energy-efficient washer and dryer.

“I can’t afford them,” I said flatly, not even bothering to point out I was renting and my landlord would have died before squeezing out an extra dime for my laundry.

“But you’ll save money in the long run, and it’s the right thing to do,” my friends intoned, as if this would fix the problem.

“I can’t afford them – right now,” I answered back.

They looked at me like I had lobsters coming out of my ears, and I could see the internal head-shaking in disgust. Apparently the hand-wringing over my ignorance was okay, but offering to help me pay for them wasn’t.

I went home and did another load without any attendant remorse. I was just grateful not to stink in public.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have the luxury of worrying about the environment, and trying to do the right thing.

It’s admirable to express concern that not enough of us are recycling, planting trees, buying Priuses, and ensuring the homes we are building are constructed from Earth-friendly materials.

But in the grand scheme of things, we’re leaving out a bigger problem.

A lot of us are not affluent. We’re still trying to figure out how to pay for all that fat-free stuff that will help us live longer.

We’re still trying to figure out a way to afford that leading-edge healthcare for which the Pacific Northwest is renowned.

Some of us are just happy to be able to pay our electricity bills, rather than fretting over getting solar power.

In the grand scheme of things, what happens in Seattle is not going to make or break this planet. There are a lot bigger things to worry about than whether our neighbors have recycled their wine bottles or not.

Take a look at China, where air-pollution standards are close to zero. Or South America, where vast acres of rainforest continue to fall to the axe. Or sub-Sarahan Africa, where desert continues to encroach arable land, which will lead to further food shortages and famine.

If all we do is worry about Seattle, we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

And if we actually do want to worry about things on a local level, we should be trying to fix the economic disparities here in the Northwest. Only through affluence will people be able to do the things environmentalists so aggressively advocate.

It’s about taking your sites off of building a bike trail, and setting them instead on whether a person can actually afford a bike in the first place.