Green Bullshit

I still enjoy - thoroughly - Penn & Teller's Bullshit!. This week? The green movement!

Al Gore has been promoting the whole save the earth thing, and on the surface, it looks very good, doesn't it? Of course, his big mansion uses far more kilowatt hours than the average American. He travels all over the country, using a ton of (now) very expensive fossil fuels. And he buys his own "carbon credits".

Wondering what "carbon credits" are? So was I, although my eyeballs fell out of my head when I found out what a scam this is! You don't want to give up your SUV but feeling a little guilty about using it? Buy carbon credits! The money will go to wind power farms, solar paneling, etc. Go on line and put in your mileage and this Web site will calculate - somehow - your carbon production. Not that carbon is a bad thing (what do you think we are?). And of all the carbon being produced, we make under 3% of it. Volcanoes and forest fires are the biggest producers of carbon... hmmm. I think we are not the problem.

This is amazing. Carbon credits is the most see-through scam I have ever heard of - maybe as bad as buying whatcha call its from the Catholic church. Not pardons... um... I can't think of it. Ah, yes, indulgences. That's it. For some money, you could buy your way out of any sin. The more egregious the offense, the more money you pay. Martin Luther came along in the 1500s saw this and thought this seemed like a scam. (Wow, you mean the Catholic church used to scam people? Noooooo...)

It was a scam. This is just 21st century guilt. We know that if we suddenly beg for forgiveness for our sins, no matter how heinous, we will be forgiven, so that is no longer a huge cause for concern. But everyone feels guilty about green issues now, so this is the new indulgence.

In the 1970s, we were moving into an iceage (which actually was the case - the 70s was a mini-ice age), and now we have global warming. I don't buy it. I do believe that we are a wasteful species and there are things we can fix, but the weather is a cyclical thing and droughts and floods and heavy hurricane and light hurricane years happen. So do tornados. And all sorts of other things. Isn't that something?

Warming periods happen. So do cooling periods. This is a sensitive ecosystem and there are plenty of other factors that can disturb it.