It's time for another tools of note segment. This evening, we celebrate the toolness of an ecoterrorism cell. It seems too perfect, but this cell operates in the Seattle area. For some reason, every time Seattle is mentioned in this space, the post is highlighting something stupid, creepy, pointless or all three. I guess I ought not be surprised, just look at the losers who wrote in to whine to Sports Guy that some douche is stealing the Sonics.

This ecoterrorist group, the Earth Liberation Front or ELF, allegedly set fire to a row of unoccupied luxury model homes called the Street of Dreams in a Seattle suburb. These fires caused over $7 million worth of damage to the properties. The apparent motivation for the act was the claim by the developers that these luxurious homes were ecofriendly.

Now, I am always willing to condemn hypocrisy (except, of course, my own). And I imagine I am like most people in that regard. But isn't it just a little bit hypocritical to burn down homes that claim to be ecofriendly? It can't be all that ecofriendly to release whatever chemical byproducts of the arson were into the atmosphere, right?

This is one of the things that bothers me about the environmental movement. No matter what the lunatic fringe does, the rest of us are expected to act as though their excrement didn't have an unpleasant odor. And any invasion of a theoretically pristine area in the name of ecofriendly activity is perfectly acceptable.

I remember watching an Animal Planet documentary about polar bears and penguins, contrasting the two polar extremes as they deal with climate change. In the background of one of the penguin segments, I could see as clear as day some vast tracked monstrosity that the film crew used to cart their equipment around the ice shelf. I couldn't help but wonder what the carbon footprint from that behemoth was. And I couldn't help but think that whatever benefit the documentary might bring to the front lines of the war on climate change might be undone by the impact those vehicles and whatever conveyance conveyed them to the poles unleash on the pristine, vulnerable polar ecosystem.

I also remember ridiculing the tool who swam in the North Pole waters to point out the adverse effect human actions have had on our planet. I mocked him for calling himself an explorer (as though he were out there identifying terra incognita in the age of GPS and satellite mapping) and for using whatever means he used to get to the North Pole to point out that the climate is changing. And a reader pointed out that there are many different ways to grease one's body so that one can endure swimming in extreme cold conditions.

And I remember an old article from Gregg Easterbrook (Tuesday Morning Quarterback) where he mocked an environmental group who bestowed an award on two individuals who took a helicopter to monitor what residents who owned beachfront property in the Pacific Northwest were doing with their land. TMQB pointed out that helicopters are incredibly inefficient fuel guzzling machines, so whatever benefit might have come from the aerial reconnaissance probably vanished from the carbon emissions of the vehicle used.

And then there's old friend Al Gore, winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his global warming bandwagon. Meanwhile, while he jetsets all over the world to remind us that we use to much in the way of fossil fuels, he has three big mansions cranking the climate control apparatus as though it were good for the planet. And his socially maladjusted tool of a son is popping adderol and driving his hybrid as though he were coming down the back stretch on the last lap of the Indy 500.

And after all this, it's people like me who don't own cars, who leave the thermostat at 65 in the winter and keep the AC off in the summer, who recycle what can be recycled and don't throw away any more than they have to who have to change their lifestyles because they are responsible for global warming. What a world.