Scott Ott's Scrappleface: EPA to monitor eBay sales of personal carbon emissions
By: Scott Ott
Examiner Columnist
June 26, 2009
News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher.
A little-noticed provision of President Obama's cap-and-trade plan to regulate greenhouse gases authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor the sale of personal carbon dioxide offsets on eBay and Craigslist.
Carbon dioxide, a toxic gas exhaled by every American citizen as well as by domesticated and wild animals, recently came under the regulatory umbrella of the EPA, then moved to the head of the list of clear and present dangers to life on earth.
"Just as corporate carbon offsets penalize companies that manufacture things that experts say most Americans could live without," an unnamed EPA source said, "personal carbon offsets help people to make more planet-friendly lifestyle choices."
"Once the carbon dioxide emissions cap is in place," said the EPA official, "then those citizens whose exertions, or sheer immensity, generate outputs above federally-permitted levels, must purchase offsets from less hazardous citizens. Craigslist and eBay provide the ideal platform for this exchange, since most carbon-offset sellers already spend most of their time online."
"This could be a real goldmine for shallow breathers, you know, couch potatoes," the EPA source said. "And for those who over-exert, spewing out earth-threatening gas at an alarming rate, the penalty of paying for these offsets may induce them to reconsider the cost to humanity of all of that breathing."
Obama, who has had his own "lifelong struggle with excessive exhalation" due to frequent speeches and pickup basketball games, said he plans to purchase his personal offsets on eBay.
"My eBay watch list right now includes a lethargic 17-year-old gamer, and a middle-aged woman who just loves HGTV but never works in her home or garden," the president said. "I'm the leading bidder on both, and I'm hoping to get one of them for something less than the 'Buy it Now' price."
Examiner columnist Scott Ott is editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, the family-friendly news satire site, and anchor of ScrappleFace Network News, seen on YouTube.
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