From the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle (political kissing cousin to the New York Times and Washington Post):

Before jetting off to Paris for this week's star-studded global warming conference, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and her staff finally hit upon a plan to solve her first local environmental crisis — how to stop coal from being shipped through the Port of Oakland.

The answer: Declare coal a health hazard.

What is interesting is that this is an "environmental crisis" only to Mayor Schaaf's supporters; and her ploy to use the health scare idea is an excuse, not a valid reason.  She is trying to satisfy her loyal environmentalist constituents.  It is not that coal is going to be burned as a fuel in the city; it is only going to be transported into the city's port terminal by train and loaded onto ships.  Will there be coal dust?  Possibly, but that can certainly be mitigated.  The issue is that the tree-huggers are against coal per se, in any manner and under any circumstances.

And while she panders to environmentalism, like most of the climate change/global warming crowd, Ms. Schaaf thinks nothing of implanting a huge carbon footprint on the Earth while she jets halfway around the globe to join her fellows in a useless exercise to inhibit leaving carbon footprints on that same Earth.

How else to define "hypocrite"?

Walt Bussey is a retired computer systems developer.  He blogs at "The Lemming Watch."