Carbon emission indulgences?

I’d love to hear what people have to say in response to this provocative essay, which includes the following:

Here in the West, the so-called ‘war on global warming’ is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy Indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; BA hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch. This kind of behaviour is demented.

LDS-Catholic-Protestant Debate

I thought the LDS-Catholic-Protestant debate went very well, and there was no shortage of student interest, comments, and questions (I fielded questions for over an hour after the debate).  Since the topic is more theology and philosophical-theology than philosophy proper, I thought I would manage the discussion over at my blog.  Feel free to click over there to continue the conversation with comments or questions: http://web.mac.com/harrisonkleiner/ProfKleiner/Blog/Blog.htmlFYI: I will be most interested in discussing what I thought arose as the principle point of difference between the LDS and the Christian.  It boils down to the issue of transcendence – is God radically other as Creator over and against creature, or are God and man of similar ontological status?

Religious Studies meeting

This from the Religious Studies club:

We’re excited to announce the first Spring meeting of the religious studies club will be held this Thursday, January 24th at 4:30 in 326 of Old Main.  We will first have a ten minute presentation on Hebrew Exegesis and then a thirty minute presentation on the development of modern Norse Paganism.  It should be very interesting and I know our two student presenters are very knowledgeable in their individual fields.  Just a brief note – because our previous meetings were extending well beyond an hour, we have limited student presentations to one opening presentation of ten minutes and one full forty minute presentation.  In any case, we’re gonna have a lot of fun this semester.  We’ll spend a few minutes talking about some of our plans and the speakers that are coming this semester on Thursday.  (Including some very special opportunities we have in the month of February.)  Look forward to seeing you there.