Are celebrity environmentalists full of hot air?

Reading through some political news I stumbled on a short piece about a well-known actor who has not decided who he will support in the 2008 presidential election. This actor, who I will not name, will offer his support to the candidate with the strongest environmental policy. Well, good for him. We should all be more concerned about our environment, which we continue to destroy, but I am tired of hypocritical celebrity environmentalists.

Out of curiosity I looked up one of the actor's homes on Google Earth (that's right - this environmentalist owns more than one house - not good for the environment, heating and cooling all those empty homes!) As suspected, the house is quite large and appears to have a swimming pool. Here's my questions - is the swimming pool heated? Why does one person need to own a home that is probably at least 5,000 square feet? If one claims to be an environmentalist, shouldn't that philosophy be reflected in one's choice of home?

But it's not just this actor who is guilty - how about the Live Earth concert event that spanned all seven continents last month. How many of the artists flew to the venues in private jets? I know they don't want to be bothered by commoners on a commercial flight, but you can't preach about environmentalism while so blatantly being anti-environment in lifestyle. One band even made it their goal to play on several continents during the 24 hour event, which means they certainly were burning up a lot of jet fuel. Why not just play in one venue and save all the fuel?

It's not just industry that is at fault for harming our environment; it's our extreme consumerism and ravenous consumption of the earth's resources that is one of the roots of the environmental destruction that threatens our very existence. We could all take a lesson from an environmentalist friend of mine - who I will also leave unnamed - who truly lives what he believes and is probably leaving one of the smallest environmental footprints of anyone I know. As to the celebrity environmentalists who live an anti-environment lifestyle - give me a break!