I passed a bus ear­lier today shrink-wrapped with a National Grid adver­tise­ment boast­ing that “by run­ning on nat­ural gas, this bus saves 54 tons of car­bon from the environment.”

To which I say: what’s so unde­sir­able about the Earth’s sec­ond most abun­dant ele­ment by weight? The sole com­po­nent of graphite and dia­mond? The key to turn­ing ordi­nary iron into steel, which brought forth the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion? The basis of organic chem­istry? The chem­i­cal basis for all known life?

Maybe they meant “car­bon dioxide.”

While we’re on the sub­ject, we need to imme­di­ately stop the spread of the vogue term “car­bon foot­print” before it takes over the world. Its brevity makes it a poor choice for explain­ing how global warm­ing works. It also recalls other irri­tat­ingly bad abbre­vi­a­tions of this decade, such as the use of “ter­ror” to mean “terrorism.”