Alex says sins of omission (aka not upholding virtues) are no worse than sins of commission; I dispute that even if that is true in theology, our Judeo-Christian culture makes a strong distinction. I’ve talked before about how the distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission divides the environmental movement.

It turns out this aspect of ethical theory is being implemented in certifications for carbon offsets. Some projects remove carbon from the atmosphere after it has been produced, some prevent the carbon-producing activities in the first place. And then there are projects that do actions now that have the potential to reduce carbon, like planting trees…if they don’t burn down.

What’s different about what [we] do, is that what we’re doing is actually good for the environment, it’s not just less bad. Even if we got our doing bad down to zero – and I doubt that will happen – we’ll need some doing good too.