Charles Krauthammer Eviscerates Environmental Chickenhawks

I know there's a lot about this. The thing of it is, the left has actually been successful in setting the agenda for debate. Rather than discussing real life threats to us -- like Islamist terrorists -- they've bullied the country into worrying about whether the sea level will rise 23 inches by the end of the century.

If you don't have anything positive to contribute about a real threat, start blathering about a pretend one that plays better to your political base.

That said, this Krauthammer piece is must-reading. It exposes not just the blatant hypocrisy of the lefty millionaires piously instructing us all that we must consume less, but the transparent dishonesty of pretending their "carbon offsets" result in their actually being "carbon neutral."

It's a scam. No carbon is being offset anywhere.

Goldman Sachs has been one of the most aggressive firms on Wall Street about taking action on climate change; the company sends its bankers home at night in hybrid limousines.

--The New York Times, Feb. 25

Written without a hint of irony--if only your neighborhood dry cleaner sent his employees home by hybrid limousine--this front-page dispatch captured perfectly the eco-pretensions of the rich and the stupefying gullibility with which they are received.

Remember the Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore global-warming pitch at the Academy Awards? Before they spoke, the screen at the back of the stage flashed not-so-subliminal messages about how to save the planet. My personal favorite was "Ride mass transit." This to a conclave of Hollywood plutocrats who have not seen the inside of a subway since the moon landing and for whom mass transit means a stretch limo seating no fewer than 10.

Leo and Al then portentously announced that for the first time ever, the Academy Awards ceremony had gone green. What did that mean? Solar panels in the designer gowns? It turns out that the Academy neutralized the evening's "carbon footprint" by buying carbon credits. That means it sent money to a "carbon broker," who promised, after taking his cut, to reduce carbon emissions somewhere on the planet equivalent to what the stars spewed into the atmosphere while flying in on their private planes.

In other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation.

The article continues by exposing "carbon offsets" for what they are -- not genuine reductions in carbon production, but in simple political innoculation against the charge of hypocrisy.

The Profit of Doom: Bill Hobbs isn't content to rip Al Gore a new asshole; he sets to tearing him three new assholes plus a never-before-seen orifice of his own invention he's provisionally calling a "lower abdominal utility duct."

Al Gore's buying carbon offsets from a company he himself founded and serves as chairman of... meaning he buys his "offsets" from himself.

And lots of other good stuff as well.

By The Way: Al Gore's "rebuttal" to the story about his home consuming 20 times the electricity of the average American home was laughable.

First of all, he noted he uses solar panels and the like. Fine -- but the electricity he's still consuming from carbon-emitting sources is still 20x what the average American home consumes. So his solar panels have brought him down from 22 times the power to a mere 20 times the power -- this is is his idea of leading a "carbon neutral" lifestyle?

Furthermore, he engaged in the shoddy bait-and-switch of noting he was investing in renewable energy sources -- like burning garbage for power. But the question was about his carbon-dioxide emissions, not whether or not those emissions were coming from a "renewable" source. It doesn't matter if you burn hydrocarbons in the form of petroleum or gas or in the form of garbage -- you're still burning hydrocarbons, and when you do, you produce water vapor and carbon dioxide (as well as some other pollutants, and methane, a more serious greenhouse gas).

Thus his reubuttal failed to address the question -- deliberately. It would be like him saying he was investing in burning trees to create power. A "renewable" power source, to be sure, but hardly reducing the carbon dioxide associated with generating the power.

But the liberal and scientifically illiterate media went right along with it anyway -- what do mere facts matter when we're trying to save the world?

I should note, though, that global warming really is happening, and that all of the scientists -- well, not all of them; but most of them, and that's good enough -- say so.

Shep Smith told me so. And he looked right into the camera and told me to "read up" as he informed me of this.

More Offsets! BrownLine hasn't owned a car for years; now he's looking to get paid for his abstemiousness. And why shouldn't he?

And this guy? Well, he's owned a right mint.

posted by Ace at 02:57 PM

| Access Comments