The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
—H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (1918)

An email from Uber popped into my inbox the other day. It was headed: “Choosing to go green shouldn’t cost extra.” That gnomic statement was followed by this explication: “Uber Green: more sustainable, same price as Uber X.” Uber Green, as you will perhaps have gathered, is just Uber, the ride-share company, but with electric cars and hybrids—whose use of energy is officially supposed to be “more sustainable,” environmentally speaking, than that of purely petroleum-driven vehicles. Up until the day before yesterday, it was the company’s profitability—last year was its first in the black since its foundation in 2009—that it was worried about sustaining. Now it’s joining a host of other newly enlightened corporations by seeking to assuage the consciences of the worried woke, afraid that their car journeys will contribute to the planetary apocalypse that supposedly lies just over the horizon.

How satisfying, then, it must be for these conscientious ones to think that such an infinitesimal saving of carbon by their Uber rides won’t even cost them any extra! But if choosing to go green shouldn’t cost extra, it generally does. Uber has obviously taken a leaf out of the government’s book by reassuring customers who want to believe it that