Hold onto your hemp sandals, treehuggers.  Don’t drop your vanilla soy lattes, yippies.  According to a new offset plan:

CLEARCUTS + SMOKESTACKS = AWESOMENESS for the CLIMATE!!!

I told you to hold onto that latte.  While you’re cleaning the coffee stain out of your pants, let me explain.

California is building a cap and trade system.  And instead of always requiring polluters to clean up their act, the State — in it’s infinite wisdom — is allowing polluters to buy offsets so they can keep polluting.  You’re thinking, “Ok, whatever, Carl.  Big deal.  California should join the Give-Polluters-a-Pass-With-Offsets-Club.”  Hold on.  Here’s where it gets great/weird.

Because calculating the value of offsets involves plenty of math and lots of ifs, ands and what-have-yous, there is room to be creative.  So, like master artists molding clay, logging company lobbyists have talked state officials into believing that clearcutting — something linked to climate pollution — is actually good for the climate.  Too good to be true?  If you don’t believe me, read a bono-fide news article about it by clicking on this “hyperlink.”

Anyway, here’s how you do it.  First, you promise to do a little less clearcutting than you “planned.”  If you are a logging company, your “plans” are totally up you to and you can change them all the time.

Then, you can talk about the baby trees you will plant in the clearcut — and how are starving for CO2.  You explain how they are hungry little carbon sticks that just can’t wait to offset pollution somewhere else.

Next, stir in some calculations (don’t be stingy with the math!) about how much carbon is theoretically stored in the wood you got from trees in the clearcut and… PRESTO!  You can conjure up a mountain of offset credits worth millions of dollars!

So, the air can get dirtier in Los Angeles as long as corporate polluters buy offsets from clearcuts in the Sierra Mountains!  Clearcut for the climate! Another win-win made possible by carbon offsets!

Does it get any better than this?

No, not really.  So relish it now.  Take a minute and savor it.  Breathe deep…but not too deep if you are near a new coal-fired power plant outside of Fresno or something.  Offsets may be unbelievably miraculous, but they can’t cure lung cancer…yet.