Indulge Me

Climate change is quite real. 10,000 years ago the most recent ice age was ending, and glaciers extended down into the Smokey Mountains between Tennessee and North Carolina. Those glaciers are gone, so it is pretty hard to argue that the climate didn’t get warmer over that time.

On the other hand, how serious climate change is and how much human activity contributes to it are matters for scientific inquiry, and they are far from settled, no matter what you hear on the nightly news and NPR. Those glaciers retreated without any help from a single SUV or coal fired power plant.

A couple of questioning examples: there is a book written by an actual climatologist titled “Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People.” I read it. Everybody relax. And in “Apocalypse Never” Michael Shellenberger (a self described environmentalist) concludes “Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.” If it were not for Fox News or the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog you would never know these opinions exist.

But such a rational, inquiring approach will not do for the climate change zealots. If you crave power to tell people what stoves they can use and how much meat they are allowed to consume or what kind of car they can drive, or whether they can have a car at all, you need to scare them silly. If you want to tax them to pay for solar and wind power and EV subsidies to the ‘green’ industries that lobby ($) the climate czars, you need to convince the masses that ecological disaster is just around the corner. Or 10 years away, which is what most of the alarmist predictions predict. A rolling decade…. The Catholic Church did something similar for centuries. Fear of Hell after death or fear of environmental calamity; fear keeps people in line. And raises money.

A few heretics like me have pointed out that it is a mite hypocritical for John Kerry and Greta Thunberg to fly to climate conferences in private jets with size EEE carbon footprints where they lecture the rest of us ordinary people (serfs) on what kind of light bulbs we can use. Carbon offsets to the rescue!

Green businesses and developing countries can generate credits for projects that (supposedly) reduce CO2 emissions. They can then sell their credits to companies and countries that need to reduce their emissions to meet their climate goals. Third parties audit and validate these credits, though the market is fragmented and largely unregulated.

Those credits are called Carbon Offsets, and they can be purchased on the open market. Feeling guilty about that flight to Europe for some frivolous cycling vacation? You can do something about it!

Big companies are in on the game too, especially when it comes to those effective carbon cleaners known as trees:

There’s even more money to be made from carbon offsets to preserve trees, which might not be chopped down anyway. Timber company Weyerhaeuser last month boasted it had struck a deal to sell nearly 32,000 carbon credits at a price of $29 per credit.

Here on Brumby Road the Freggiaro Farm (established 1930 something) spent 90+ years trying to ‘preserve trees’. So I think we’re entitled to a little guilt free Air France Business Class travel. Or maybe we could sell some offsets for keeping the land as an orchard, removing carbon from the atmosphere, instead of selling it for houses and strip malls.

Want to buy an indulgence? We’ve got ’em!

Carbon offsets are just a new take on an old trick…

The medieval indulgence was a writ offered by the Church, for money, guaranteeing the remission of sin, and its abuse was the spark that inspired Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

I’m oversimplifying, but essentially a sinner was supposed to get right with God through repentance and confession, but then he/she/they/ze could, with a financial contribution to the Church treasury, exempt themselves from the worldly consequences of their actions, like excommunication. Guilt be gone!

Carbon offsets ‘go and do likewise’, removing guilt from those enjoying the privilege of prosperity (see my last blog for more on ‘privilege’) . Taylor Swift is using them to shield herself from criticism for flying a private jet all over the world to get to and from Chiefs games. Al Gore and John Kerrey can claim to be ‘carbon neutral’ using offsets while their chefs cook on gas stoves. Even the late lamented Tour of California cycling race used to claim carbon neutrality, though the team busses and cars and planes that flew the riders here from Europe weren’t battery powered. All they did was get some sponsor to pay, then hand the money to an offset company which held a good chunk for ‘administration’ and lobbying (read ‘kickbacks’) before sending a pittance to someone to plant a tree or save one somewhere.

My next trip to France will be guilt free. I think I’ve planted and tended and preserved more trees than most of my readers, so I can claim have lived a planet friendly, nearly carbon neutral life. Now regarding hot air production, that might be another story…