Iain Murray, one of the masterminds who made the CEI ad that claimed that Al Gore produced as much CO2 as the state of Kentucky, discovers that Gore, on net, produces no CO2:
Al Gore justifies his enjoyment of a carbon-intensive lifestyle in a speech in the UK:
He said he was "carbon neutral" himself and he tried to offset any plane flight or car journey by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere".
Translation: I am rich enough to benefit from executive jets and Lincolns because I pay my indulgences. All you proles have to give up your cars, flights and air conditioning.
Now in their ad, the CEI accused Gore of hypocrisy for suggesting ways that people could reduce the amount of CO2 they produce while, according to the CEI's calculations, producing four million times as much CO2 as the average person. When Murray finds out that Gore isn't producing any net CO2, he pretends that Gore is advocating that the "proles" give up cars, flights and air conditioning. But that isn't what Gore said in the movie at all. He didn't say that everyone should become carbon neutral, just mentioned ways people could reduce their CO2 production. They aren't things that just rich people could afford -- in fact, many of them save money.
Nor, in any case, is becoming carbon neutral something only the rich can afford. The current price is $99 per year.
Murray concludes with:
The new aristocracy; there's no other way to describe it.
It may seem that Murray is full of irrational hatred for Gore, but he isn't -- Murray is just doing the job he is paid for.
Update: Keiran Healy comments on Murray's descent into hackdom.
Proles?
Is that short for "parolees"?
Or is that simply the Texan version of the common troll?
As Molly Ivins loves to say (First Rule of Holes) "When you find yourself in a hole, don't keep digging".
I assume "proles" is short for proletariat.
laurence jewett, see wikipedia:
Proles
It's my experience that those from the commonwealth (by which I mean to include UK, CA, NZ, etc) tend to use the term far more often than people from the US.
Best damn argument against immigration I've heard this week.
'Proles' is also very widely used and understood in Australia.
Thanks for all the help in the language department.
I'm a prole and I didn't even know it, but I will make a note for future reference.
Or less, if you have the space to plant trees yourself and take advantage of inexpensive young trees (like ones a foot high or less). You can get them for a few dollars per tree in some cases.
My family and I have a huge area of half-dead (well, OK, more like 80% dead) Kentucky bluegrass to the side of our house. It never looks good, no matter how much water we pour on it. So we're turning it into a miniature grove of Norway spruce. There are some other trees going into other parts of the yard, 10-12 all told.
Price for all the baby trees: about $50. The spruce trees will recover their costs after a few months of not watering the lawn; about 5-10 years of not watering will completely pay for the landscaping as well.
Well, if we can really all become carbon neutral for A$99 per year - oh, make that US$139 per year for the USA since consumption is higher here, then we can simply cease all the fuss about global warming by funding neutralization out of a barely noticeable tax increase in each developed country. At that rate, the USA would need to raise about $40 billion per year, which is far less than what we spend in aggregate on "pork barrel" projects.
So this sort of neutralization must be mainly greenwash, in that it simply doesn't scale very far. After all, if it did, we would long since have had said tax increase and the program to go with it. It would be so trivial an expenditure that the instant one raised a precautionary argument in its favor, it would become politically impossible to vote against it - even in the US Congress. N.B. - this is an economic sort of argument, not a scientific one.
So I think Mr Gore is not quite so innocent as the wind-driven snow. Most people don't have 'huge areas' of land available to them - and actually, on average, at current world population density, absolutely no one does. So it is surely impossible for everone to buy enough land use - i.e. neutralization credits - to become carbon neutral. And Mr. Gore is doing it simply by seizing the use of vastly more land than is available to the average person.
Now, the main argument in favor of letting rich folks like Mr. Gore do whatever they please in these respects has always been that "it's not a zero sum game", their fabulous income and consumption don't subtract from yours. However, in a negative-sum world where one might be trying to reduce world CO2 emissions by the widely prescribed 60 or 80 percent, that argument vanishes. In order to avoid killing people in less developed countries it would take reductions of 90% or more in the large per-capita emissions of developed countries. In such a world, no one, not the "proles", and not Mr Gore either, would have any business flying.
An excellent point by PaulS.
Unless people concerned with global warming can get their concerns across by producing absolutely no carbon emissions they are not quite so innocent as the driven snow.
Of course, since this may well be impossible, it leaves the field of debate open only to those who deny global warming and can act on their "beliefs" in any way they choose.
Without accusing PaulS of such, it's simply amazing how many conservatives and global warming sceptics suddenly become raging populists when a "liberal" has some money.
Those who believe that global warming is not real should probably drop the carbon emissions of others since they themselves don't believe this is an issue. They may want to acknowledge that it is currently impossible to have much of an impact on global warming without traveling and base their arguments on the science of warming.
In the end, if Mr. Gore is both correct (as he almost certainly has been right along) and effective (one can only hope), his contributionj over the long haul will have more than justified his transient expense.
"So it is surely impossible for everone to buy enough land use - i.e. neutralization credits - to become carbon neutral."
Ah, the use of pure logic to the exclusion of mere facts.
Why don't you go look up the amount of CO2 sequestered by oen hectare of trees in a year and do the math?
"So it is surely impossible for everone to buy enough land use - i.e. neutralization credits - to become carbon neutral."
Given that the vast majority of the human race was and is carbon neutral, this is a strange thought with strange ramifications for the industrialized nations and the long term survival of their middle class.
To be fair to PaulS, he is probably correct about the scaling. The reason why making oneself carbon neutral in the U.S. is so cheap is that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be harvested. And, indeed, if everyone tried to go carbon-neutral, the costs of doing so would rise. See this RealClimate post on the subject: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/buying-a-stairway…
That being said, I don't see how this is greenwashing or land-seizing or all this other stuff that PaulS goes on to accuse Gore of doing. Yes, Gore is currently benefitting from the fact that others are so wasteful that the costs associated with reducing this waste are low. However, that is rather part of the point being made.
Admittedly, the difficulties and costs associated with making the emissions cuts / sequestration that will be needed are going to be higher. However, this is all the more reason to get started on finding solutions as quickly as possible. And, the way one does this in market economies is to let the market know that there is a cost associated with greenhouse gas emissions so that the market will encourage the development and implementation of such technology. This is exactly what Gore and the like want to see happen and is exactly what people like PaulS and the good folks at CEI seem to be resisting with all their might. They would rather sit around and whine about how costly it will be and how the technology doesn't exist as some sort of weird justification as to why they should be allowed to continue to use the atmosphere as their free sewer.
I'm still not getting it. The problem of global warming allegedly can be neutralized by spending a mere $A99 pa per person. It follows that we could fix it once for all by levying a very small ongoing tax in developed countries to support a worldwide neutralization program. And people in developing countries - "the vast majority of the human race" - fortunately need do nothing at all, as they are allegedly already carbon-neutral.
And yet we seemingly refuse to solve the problem, even at such low cost only to a minority that can readily afford it. Instead, we prefer to go out to see end-of-the-world movies even as we watch the temperature rise. Strange.
My favorite thing about the antics of the CEI, TCS, and the other hack outfits is not the lies, it's not the stupidity... it's the phony populism. See, they're for the little guy, unlike you elitist snobs. Nevermind their funding from Exxon-Mobil and other large corporate concerns, they're in this fight for the working class!
So, unless Gore is "pure as the driven snow", he should be ignored. That's the equivalent of saying that you shouldn't do charity unless you are Mother Theresa.
Wingnut logic at it's finest.
"I'm still not getting it. The problem of global warming allegedly can be neutralized by spending a mere $A99 pa per person. It follows that we could fix it once for all by levying a very small ongoing tax in developed countries to support a worldwide neutralization program. And people in developing countries - "the vast majority of the human race" - fortunately need do nothing at all, as they are allegedly already carbon-neutral.
And yet we seemingly refuse to solve the problem, even at such low cost only to a minority that can readily afford it. Instead, we prefer to go out to see end-of-the-world movies even as we watch the temperature rise. Strange."
PaulS, can I suggest you refresh yourself on the work of the great American economist Mancur Olson and, in particular, his work on "pressure groups".
Consider his argument on why import protection persists in spite of the vast volume of theoretical and empirical work demonstrating its pernicious effects and apply it to Exxon Mobil's stand on global warming.
This may provide a useful starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson
I'm simply finding it difficult to face any longer. What they're doing ought to be illegal. I really approve of the title of this post.
http://myron-ebell.blogspot.com/