What’s Old is New Again.
Recently, it was reported that Al Gore’s energy use was highly hypocritical, given his demogaugery of the Global Warming issue. According to one paper:
The home’s average monthly electric bill last year was just under $1,200, according to bills that The Tennessean acquired from Nashville Electric Service.
Of course, Gore fought back, saying that he offsets his power usage by purchasing carbon offsets to lower his carbon footprint on the planet. He buys them from a company called Generation Investment Management, which coincidently (I’m sure) Al Gore is the Chairman and one of the six founding partners. So, in essence, he profits by using energy and buying offsets from himself. The website is very sparse and non-descriptive as to what it actually does, but Wikipedia says that generally carbon offsets are done by planting trees to offset your carbon use, in an effort to become carbon neutral.
Unfortunately, planting trees as a carbon offset is very much in question; as a tree gives off more carbon dioxide when it is decaying than they absorb while they are alive. So, planting trees to offset your carbon usage is completely useless. We won’t focus on this; as there is no evidence Gore is using his company to “plant trees” to offset his carbon usage. It’s very possible it does investment more wisely. It’s irrelevant anyways.
The real point is that, to reduce the sin of using more power than the average American, Gore is buying his indulgences by tithing to a corporation that forgives him of his sins. It’s all very religious. Very medieval.
Gore has also questioned that the media is too fair, in its reporting of Global Warming, noting that 53% (or so) of news stories doubt global warming exists. He thinks the coverage should more reflect his view that Global Warming is real and dangerous.
As Opinion Journal notes:
So, let’s sum this up: Here we have a major American politician who is calling for policies that would impose huge costs on society but appears to be profiting handsomely himself; who is leading an extravagant lifestyle while demanding sacrifices from ordinary people; and who is calling on the media to suppress the views of those with whom he disagrees, while at the same time urging more government regulation in the name of “fairness” to his partisan and ideological allies.
In reality this is a Sacrament of Pennance, “In other words, sin is fully pardoned, i.e. its effects entirely obliterated, only when complete reparation, and consequently release from penalty as well as from guilt, has been made.”
So, as long as Gore can continue to pay for his sins, he is free to commit as many as he wants. This is a similar setup to what Kyoto was, where countries are allowed to continue to purchase indulgences to pay the price of your sins.
Carbon offsetting has become an ultra-fashionable way for the wealthy middle classes to assuage their green guilt by use of a little cash and equally scant thought. The theory behind carbon offsetting is simple: you can repair the damage created by your flight - in the form of emissions of carbon dioxide (the main man-made greenhouse gas) - or other profligate consumption, such as driving a gas-guzzling car, by paying an offset firm to fund the cutting of CO2 production elsewhere, for example by planting trees.
In a world, where money fixes everything. Money gets you a good lawyer to get out of jail, money buys your way into a club, money buys you beauty; it’s not surprising that money cures your sins and lets you indulge in destroying a planet you are supposed to love.
In fact, we have colleges and countries becoming “carbon neutral” through buying indulgences - and proud of it to boot.
The achievement means that the campus has reduced emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming to 7 percent below what it produced in 1990. The reduction was achieved through the purchase of carbon dioxide offsets.
So, what we have here is a college claiming to be more “environmentally friendly” by buying offsets, which actually raise the theoretical carbon footprint of the country where it bought them. So there is no real “reduction” - just the purchasing of continued indulgences. What this means, is that, if you are a country that sells indulgences - and this, buying someone else’s sins - your future prosperity is limited, because your carbon footprint cannot surpass the Kyoto limitations.
Is that what environmentalism is now? Buying indulgences to pay for your sins? And forcing third world countries into perpetual misery in the future because you cannot stop sinning?
Related: Al Gore and the New World Order. Capitalism; that isn’t quite. Very Atlas Shrugged, actually.
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angie68 on April 15th, 2007
About time someone talked about global warming and destruction, what we need not is for the politcians to get behind it to save man kind otherwise we are in major troble
angie68 on April 15th, 2007
hello as i said polliticians must make a stand against global warming for all us peoople and our children
Kyoto: A Story of Corruption and Profit: Read it at Lorien1973.Com on June 3rd, 2007
[…] we previously discussed, the Kyoto treaty seeks to reduce carbon emissions through a system of carbon […]