I started thinking today about the difference - or rather, similarity - between regulating carbon dioxide emissions and abortion.

I was questioning my adherence to my "environmental ideals," these very black-and-white perceptions of what's right when it comes to saving Green. Am I the Nation's hypocrit, giving neural- and lip-service to the warm and fluffy goals of the WWF's Sad Panda Eyes Campaign while enabling rich white suburbanites to drive gas-swigging Land Rovers? (Which, by the way, won't ever really "rove" the "land." Unless "concrete" is the new "land")

I love what I do. I've "really drunk the kool-aid," as Jonny put it. But, I whine in a way that sounds pathetically shoulder-shrugging and responsibility-waiving even to my own ears, there's such a disconnect from the neat-o engineering I do day-to-day out here to the potentially negative global impact that viscious fluid has! How can something that feels so good be wrong?

It doesn't seem so negative when I'm out here, seeing the precautions we take to be prudent and responsible. From the middle of the Gulf -- a Gulf with the hazy edges of Dusk and lolling Ocean meeting in springtime -- the world seems altruistic, beautiful, happy, destined. Settled. But my network-tied lifelines to the rest of the world say otherwise.

Back to how the government legislating what I can and cannot do with my body is a succint analog for the Supreme Court's ruling that the EPA has the authority, and the responsibility, to regulate green house gases.

Disappointment has clouded my view on the EPA's motives in the way many of its regulations are written, applied, and enforced. The specific ways the Agency impacts my daily business demonstrate their love of royalties and production so long as they can pass the red-faced test that their regulations limit the industry's adverse effect on the Gulf. It's heartening, though, to see the stewardship that my colleauges and company exercise for our surroundings. So it was no surprise to me to see the Agency's "side" in the Supreme Court case ("let's find a loophole and take advantage of it!"): they had no role in regulating global warming-inducing emissions because carbon dioxide is not legally a pollutant.

Disclaimer: I think pollution is bad. I think we each have a responsibility to recycle and conserve where possible. And, the government probably has some role in ensuring that the globe doesn't become one gigantic Tragedy of the Commons, with the rich industrialized nations puffing car exhaust that even an in-tact rainforest working overtime couldn't counter-act and paying to send the trash we vehemently oppose, NIMBY, to third world countries with no leverage...but where's the line after the government tells me what kind of car I can drive? When does my individual carbon balance become regulated? When does my impact on the community around me supercede my own personal choices? Just like abortion -- how can the government try tell me that I can't do whatever I want with my own body because it'd infringe on "someone" else's rights (the unborn baby. I don't want to open this whole other can of worms of whether a fetus is a person. I think bloggy would feel a little too politically raging instead of the sweet and whimsical touch these pages often shoot for.)

What, then, are my environmental freedoms? What environmental liberties am I, or the little boy playing kick-the-can in the slums of Brazil, or the sister walking to school in Africa...what liberties are we entitled to? Where does my environmental freedom end, and begin to encroach on another's? When, and for what reasons, can the government tell me what my role is in the global carbon cycle? How can we claim stewardship when it's come two thousand years late? At this point, is the earth experiencing a hysteresis of environmental paradigm shift? No matter what actions we take now, will we be able to appreciably impact the reality of 50 years from now? 80? 130?

I'm still a Rachel Carson fan and genuinly believe in the power of sunsets, being lost in the middle of nowhere, gently sloping trees, and bird chirps. But I'm starting to disbelieve that mankind will be able to undo all the damage it's already done. And I'm continuing to wonder if mankind really wants to change or just wants to sound like he wants to change.

What do you think?