It's like buying your way out of the draft back during the Civil War.
It's like buying your way out of the draft back during the Civil War.
The "ostensibly non-partisan free-market group" is an illegitimate conservative think tank.
And it's another round of 'How dare rich people speak for anyone but other rich people.' I'd love to see a comparison of Gore's gross energy use (that is, leaving aside the offsets) to other households in his income/wealth bracket -- my guess is it's perfectly normal.
Also, I liked August Pollak's take on this:
I love South Park, but the one thing I'll eternally hate it for is how it helped established the mainstream idea that "stupid and wrong, but clever in a ha-ha gotcha way" is an acceptable counter to actual facts.
I think this is a scenario where Peter Singer's moral calculus comes into play. Buying just enough carbon offsets to cancel out his house is an arbitrary thing to do from the globe's point of view. He can afford to buy more.
But he does do more -- he's devoted his professional life for the last several years to the issue. Looking at the guy who's done more about global warming than almost anyone else in the world and carping because he isn't living in an unheated shack is kind of weird.
Only the Unabomber has uncompromised moral authority!
3: the unauthorized substances tax, or the "crack tax," which requires drug dealers to buy stamps from the state showing that they have paid taxes on the illicit drugs.
Waitaminute. What?
We bought carbon offsets for our car last year, but I still don't quite get how they work. If everyone offset their footprint, it's not like carbon emissions would be zero- either the demand for green power would increase the cost so much that no one could afford it, or the offsets purchased wouldn't actually match the carbon they supposedly offset.
5: It's the "post "ha!", ergo propter "ha!"" fallacy.
If everyone offset their footprint
But everyone doesn't, so it still works.
10: I think that's right -- it's not a solution that can be generalized to cover all the energy use in the world. It just helps some when a limited number of people buy them.
It's pretty obvious that "libertarian" is a commonly short for "right wing screwball hack"
#9, that's another hilarious example of cruel exploitation in the name of the War On Drugs. Some legislature or attorney general somewhere said "Heh heh heh...you know what would be great...once we bring the scumbags in...we can charge them not just for selling the drugs, but for not paying the drug tax! Just imagine the look on his face when he realizes that he has no options at all and his fate will be even more horrible than he thought. Man, we are so moral."
the demand for green power would increase the cost so much that no one could afford it
Or, the increased demand would make green power economical enough that it would lower the cost so that everyone could afford it.
A problem with carbon offsets is that it possibly gives people an excuse to not reduce their consumption in the first place, obviously the ideal solution. However, it is a nice way to get some investment into green technologies.
My carbon footprint is pretty ridiculously low, so somebody's else's carbon offsets should be coming to me in the form of sweet, cold cash, right?
that's unfair, gswift. It should be "right wing hack with no religious beliefs".
somebody's else's carbon offsets should be coming to me in the form of sweet, cold cash, right?
Unless you have a bank of solar panels on your roof and are feeding electricity back into the grid (which some people do! And the power company is required to buy the electricity off of you!), you still have some sort of footprint. However, the carbon offset you'd buy would be quite cheap.
I find it really tiresome how a primary political attacks these days is for hypocrisy. "We don't believe global warming exists, but zomg Al Gore is emitting teh CO2!" Similarly the fretting over Romney/Giuliani over choice stances.
10: Some is offset by emission reduction, some by emission absorption.
AS I understand it, the viability of carbon offsets is limited by the carbon sink technologies available (or by space - if all 6.5bn of us decided to buy into additional broadleaf forest, the environmental consequences would be weird at least). So at best they're a partial, temporary fix for rich folk, as SP says upthread. If Gore really wanted to impress me, which I'm sure he doesn't, he'd use all that money to build a zero energy house.
a primary political attacks these days is for hypocrisy
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is branding D-list blogger apostropher a hypocrite. "He says he supports a cleaner environment and yet continues to leave flaming bags of excrement outside our office's front door." Apostropher declined to comment for this article.
Is this election just going to become a critique of people's houses? Will we elect the president with just the right home: not too big, energy efficient, decorated with homey Americana that no one finds threatening?
Elect me! I have a windmill, and needlepoint pictures of teddy bears!
Elect me! My bathroom sink is finally declogged! My Norfolk pine is flourishing!
2: Or like paying income tax now so you can hire professional soldiers?
decorated with homey Americana that no one finds threatening
I find homey Americana threatening.
What you people are overlooking is that when Al Gore was hanging out in Eugene eating mushrooms with John Zerzan, he was totally, "Yeah, we're going to smash the system, man, and bring America back to the hunter-gatherer ways of Neanderthal man, who had like 342 leisure days a year," so the fact that he's living in a big house and paying money to bring down his carbon usage means he's a total hypocrite. Plus, when he was at Burning Man, he was all, "My favorite band is Crass," but I saw on his MySpace page that his favorite band is Saves the Day. Reason has him dead to rights: he's also a total poseur who probably bought his Crass t-shirt at Hot Topic.
Carbon offsets certainly have some limits .
Also, if you fly around the world the way Gore does, his house's energy consumption probably pales in comparison.
Everyone can't just buy carbon offsets, people have to sell them, too. Right now, the amount of money you have to pay to find someone willing to cut 1000kg of carbon emissions is pretty low; if enough people buy them, at some point you'll decide it's better to buy a car with a tiny engine and sell your carbon emission rights to the airlines.
It's not entirely trolling at this point to shout "It's Econ 101!"
It's not entirely trolling at this point to shout "It's Econ 101!"
No?
32: Back before most people were born I knew a stoner cousin of Al Gore. He was an authentic stoner, though he did have an elitist attitude.