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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Carbon Credits

Do a quick search online and you'll find multiple companies offering you "carbon credits". They figure out your carbon footprint -- the total amount of greenhouse gas emission that you are causing. You pay a fee. That fee goes to a wind farm in Texas or a reforestation project in Brazil, some program that offsets the emissions you are causing. Now, the version in the Kyoto Protocol was a little different. Designed for companies rather than individuals, the idea was to pay poorer countries to reduce their emissions while developed countries remained at the same level. Either way -- POOF! -- you don't have to stop your emissions. You just pay someone else to take care of it.

As it turns out (and this will likely come as a shock to all of you), the program is nonsense. Studies show that the results are being falsified or misstated. As it turns out, actually measuring the effectiveness of this concept is nearly impossible. Go figure.

But the numbers are still changing. Two scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have published their findings. As it turns out, the real cause of global warming is obesity. You see, obese people require extra food production which causes more carbon emissions. They cost more (in carbon emissions) to move around. They won't likely walk or cycle. See? Proof! Die, fat people!! Or not.

What's frightening to me is that this kind of stuff (like the odd fact that Al Gore pays his own company for carbon offsets -- yes, Al Gore has a company that makes money off the global warming frenzy) just drifts on by under the cover of the "global warming" religion that America has swallowed without a thought. People will look harder at the obvious idea that God designed the universe than they will at the unproven climate change issue or the "born that way" "certainty". Is there a point at which we say, "If you're that gullible, you deserve what you get"?

5 comments:

Danny Wright said...

And we thought the concept of paying indulgences was dead.

Stan said...

And who would have thought that Al Gore was Catholic? :)

Danny Wright said...

That's his stage religion. We all know he really worships in the house of POWER.

Dan Trabue said...

Fellas, disagree with Gore's policies if you feel you must, but there's no need to mock the Brother's religion.

I don't have time to get into it now, but I have some experience with carbon credits and think it makes a good deal of sense, at least in some situations. It's a way of trying to let the Market deal with problems, rather than having the gov't intervene.

Whatever you think of the problems of carbon credits, it seems like we could agree that we need to do a better job of tending God's creation.

Stan said...

Dan Trabue,

I'm sorry if I appeared to be mocking Al Gore's religion. I have no idea what Al Gore's religious beliefs are beyond "save the planet". It was humor about "paying indulgences", a largely "Catholic" notion, that I was mocking.

You're certainly free to disagree with my suggestion that paying someone else to mend their ways so I don't have to is a stupid idea. You're certainly free to buy the notion that the humans that infest this large planet in its own vast system are capable of destroying it all. But by the same token I should be free to mock the nonsensical idea that rejects entirely the presence of the Creator and His Sovereignty and leaves Man as the sole source of all that occurs here.

On the notion of "carbon credits", can't we just do this for everything? "Mr. Trabue, you've failed to pay your taxes for the last 5 years." "Oh, don't worry, your honor, I'm paying someone else to pay my taxes so I don't have to." Or something similar? Why not? (Rhetorical questions. I do not expect nor do I want an answer. I won't be debating this issue.)