budanski
03-07-2007, 01:37 AM
Carbon Offsets: Al Gore's Big Easy
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY (http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258075474834657)
Posted 3/6/2007
Environmentalism: Gore's carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla's, but he eases his conscience with "carbon offsets." He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.
Whoda thunk it? Former oilman George Bush, scourge of the environment, lives in a house more eco-friendly than Al Gore, a dwelling that would make Hollywood eco-activist Ed Begley, star of HGTV's "Living With Ed," drool.
When Dubya spends time at his Crawford ranch, he's in a single-story, 4,000-square-foot limestone house that a 2001 article in USA Today described as an "eco-friendly haven." Even David Roberts, staff writer for the online environmental magazine Grist has called the energy efficiency of the president's home as "fantastic."
As USA Today described it: "Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is called 'gray water,' and one tank for 'black water' from the kitchen and toilets." The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater.
In addition, "the Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems use." As Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted: "It's interesting that Bush seems to actually practice conservation, while Gore seems to want to buy his way out of his obligations."
Lewis was referring to the buying and selling of "carbon offsets," a mechanism that allows Gore's home to consume 20 times as many kilowatt-hours as the average American's. It allows gluttonous energy consumers like Gore to ease their conscience while doing absolutely nothing to curb their own energy use.
Say you want to fly your Gulfstream private jet across the country regularly to Hollywood premieres instead of taking a Greyhound bus. You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like invest it in windmills and solar panels to "reduce" carbon emissions by an equivalent amount. Your are then declared "carbon neutral" as you continue to pollute.
Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.
The number of companies jumping into this market has multiplied. In 2006, at least 60 sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from a dozen firms selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004. That's a lot of green.
We recently wrote about the conscience-easing of folks like a San Jose State professor who can continue to drive her Lexus guilt-free because she made a contribution to a San Francisco company called TerraPass. It takes her money and invests in wind power and ways to reduce farm pollution, giving her a sticker to put on her car.
Skeptics of this scheme — perhaps we should call it a scam — include, interestingly enough, Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a group working on the reduction of greenhouse gases for the U.N.'s International Panel of Climate Change. "What these companies are allowing people to do," said Rayner, "is to carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience."
There's a word for this — hypocrisy. The only one with a clear conscience should be Bush, friend of Earth.
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY (http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258075474834657)
Posted 3/6/2007
Environmentalism: Gore's carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla's, but he eases his conscience with "carbon offsets." He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.
Whoda thunk it? Former oilman George Bush, scourge of the environment, lives in a house more eco-friendly than Al Gore, a dwelling that would make Hollywood eco-activist Ed Begley, star of HGTV's "Living With Ed," drool.
When Dubya spends time at his Crawford ranch, he's in a single-story, 4,000-square-foot limestone house that a 2001 article in USA Today described as an "eco-friendly haven." Even David Roberts, staff writer for the online environmental magazine Grist has called the energy efficiency of the president's home as "fantastic."
As USA Today described it: "Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is called 'gray water,' and one tank for 'black water' from the kitchen and toilets." The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater.
In addition, "the Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems use." As Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted: "It's interesting that Bush seems to actually practice conservation, while Gore seems to want to buy his way out of his obligations."
Lewis was referring to the buying and selling of "carbon offsets," a mechanism that allows Gore's home to consume 20 times as many kilowatt-hours as the average American's. It allows gluttonous energy consumers like Gore to ease their conscience while doing absolutely nothing to curb their own energy use.
Say you want to fly your Gulfstream private jet across the country regularly to Hollywood premieres instead of taking a Greyhound bus. You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like invest it in windmills and solar panels to "reduce" carbon emissions by an equivalent amount. Your are then declared "carbon neutral" as you continue to pollute.
Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.
The number of companies jumping into this market has multiplied. In 2006, at least 60 sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from a dozen firms selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004. That's a lot of green.
We recently wrote about the conscience-easing of folks like a San Jose State professor who can continue to drive her Lexus guilt-free because she made a contribution to a San Francisco company called TerraPass. It takes her money and invests in wind power and ways to reduce farm pollution, giving her a sticker to put on her car.
Skeptics of this scheme — perhaps we should call it a scam — include, interestingly enough, Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a group working on the reduction of greenhouse gases for the U.N.'s International Panel of Climate Change. "What these companies are allowing people to do," said Rayner, "is to carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience."
There's a word for this — hypocrisy. The only one with a clear conscience should be Bush, friend of Earth.