Carbon linguistics (NYT)

I love the writing of Verlyn Klinkenborg. Below is an excerpt from today’s NYT about “Carbon Footprint”: he says it much better than I, so please click through and read it.

Editorial Observer – Some Doubts Upon Entering a New Carboniferous Era – Editorial – NYTimes.com
The swiftness of this change in consciousness — and the linguistic change that goes with it — is staggering. And a little worrying. For one, it is vastly easier to find new words than it is to overturn old habits, and all too easy to mistake the ubiquity of the new carbon-speak for substantive change. Carbon footprinting — the act of calculating the size of your carbon footprint — is still a rough-and-ready business. There is every likelihood of better environmental indexes down the road, better ways to measure the scale of individual, civic and corporate environmental guilt.