Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section featured a piece by Elisabeth Rosenthal headlined “Green Development? Not in My (Liberal) Backyard.”

Rosenthal addresses the anomaly/hypocrisy of eco-advocates who favor environmentally friendly initiatives such as bike paths or wind turbines, so long as it’s not in their neighborhood:

Last week, two groups of New Yorkers who live “on or near” Prospect Park West, a prestigious address in Park Slope, filed a suit against the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to remove a nine-month-old bike lane that has commandeered a lane previously used by cars.

In Massachusetts, the formidable opponents of Cape Wind, a proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, include members of the Kennedy family, whose compound looks out over the body of water. In Berkeley last year, the objections of store owners and residents forced the city to shelve plans for a full bus rapid transit system (B.R.T.), a form of green mass transit in which lanes that formerly served cars are blocked off and usurped by high-capacity buses that resemble above-ground subways.

The reason, Rosenthal says, is that convenience generally trumps conviction.

Test yourself: When a sign in a hotel bathroom exhorts you to reuse your towel for the sake of the planet, do you nonetheless tend to throw it on the floor to get a new one? (Me: Guilty.)

Seriously, Ms. Rosenthal? You can’t use a hotel towel twice?

That’s just pathetic.

And I say that as someone who doesn’t have kids, so I don’t have to care about the rain forest ‘n’  stuff. But really . . .