Another Eco-hypocrite

From this morning's NY Post:

"TRUDIE Styler -- who co-founded the Rainforest Foundation 20 years ago -- flew her hairstylist from New York to Washington, DC, last weekend on a private jet to do her hair and makeup for the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

"While her husband, Sting, flew on commercial flights round-trip from London, Styler and an entourage of eight, including her Manhattan-based hair guru Antonio Prieto, took a private plane to the event, instead of taking the shuttle or taking an energy-saving Amtrak train.

"'The stylist was added to a previous scheduled flight to DC and flew back commercially,' a rep for Styler told Page Six.

"Styler herself added, 'Yes, I do take planes. My life is to travel and my life is also to speak out about the horrors of an environment that is being abused at the hands of oil companies.'

"The rocker and his wife are big proponents of saving the rainforests. But as The Post reported last year, Sting's star-studded charity concert for the Rainforest Foundation in 2006 donated only 41 percent of the proceeds to tree-saving programs. Well-run charities typically spend 75 percent on programs.

"Last May, Britain's Daily Mail reported the couple owns seven homes and 'have a carbon footprint estimated at 30 times that of the average UK resident'."

Why is it that those celebrities most preachy about the environment are invariably the most wasteful themselves?

There's definitely a correlation. Al Gore and his gigantic mansion in Tennessee with a carbon footprint twenty times that of the average US household. Barbra Streisand with a room just for her furs which she keeps at fifty-five degrees all summer (after telling the rest of us that we should only turn our thermostats down to eighty). John Edwards, who campaigned as an environmentalist, and his 25,000 square foot house. Leo DiCaprio and his private planes. John Travolta and his private fleet of jumbo jets.

The common thread seems to be self-indulgence. It takes a very self-indulgent person to surround themselves with gigantic mansions and fly on private planes. And it takes a very self-indulgent person to preach to us common folk how we should lead our lives. (In psychology, such people are known as narcissistic personalities.)

It's true, part of the reason that celebrities are so wasteful is because they are rich, and some of us common folk, had we similar bank accounts, would be wasteful too. But most of us, even if we did indulge ourselves, wouldn't compound the sin by telling everybody else they should be the ones to sacrifice.

Those evil oil companies Trudie Styler rails against must be delighted to have her as a customer.

You didn't have to bother to read either the Post article or this blogpost, by the way. All you had to do was look at the picture. The over-collagened lips, the extreme nose job, the too-tight face lift, and the self-satisfied smile tell you all you really need to know about Trudie.