Carbon Credits aren’t just for Al Gore and the filthy rich any longer. Even the rabble — yes, you and me — can have access to these incredible investment vehicles……

Here’s a related story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jets28feb28,0,2448915.story

So — where are we going with this? Is the public going to say, “Nah, I don’t have to change anything, ‘cuz the leaders aren’t walking the walk”? And if we want them to walk the walk, then are we going to lower our own expectation of how they do their jobs (via flying around on non-commercial flights… which brings up security…)?

I don’t think everybody’s laboring under the jealousy problem, btw. I think it’s also an easy out for people who don’t see any reason to conserve, or make changes in their own consumption patterns. Those folks probably wouldn’t do so anyway, but this gives a great excuse.

i hear what you’re saying — I really do. On the other hand, I’ve tried and tried to picture who (other than an ascetic) would be able to claim the moral high ground on any issue like this one… and I keep drawing a blank.

Had this not come in immediately behind the John Edwards Has a Really Big House story, I might not be snorting through my nose at everybody like this… but when taken together, it’s hard to miss the overall tone of the criticism.

Why don’t you buy that? The problem here isn’t the consumption, it’s the hypocrisy. This is why Drudge isn’t running the power bills of the White House, or ExxonMobil executives. We expect rich folks to use lots of juice, and that’s just how it goes.

But when some of those same rich folks tell me to change my light bulbs, that’s where it gets problematic. I don’t happen to think using a lot of electricity is wrong, as long as you pay for it. But attacking others for doing it, while doing it yourself, is wrong.

“OMG, they are rich!”

I thought they wanted people to get rich.

That’s not quite true. They al;so mounted a “slime” campaign to pull selections from comments on blogs to show how nasty and unhinged liberals are. Generally if liberals talk about the unhinged right we don’t have to pull from comments before they get deleted - we document the big name poster.

Here’s my bet: as big a polluter as China is now, they’re going to invest heavily in alternative energy and wind up winning big.

No matter what you think of those upheavals, the characterization of what Gore asks of others that has been circulating with this story is simply untrue.

The “x times more than average household” blurb made me laugh. Someone should look at the whole of Congress and their homes’ energy consumption. Odds are they’d find similar results. None of them are anywhere near the average household. But that wouldn’t help kill the messenger.

And Glide, 6-7 years ago (pre-dereg) an Econ professor at UH pointed out the fallacy of energy deregulation in such simple terms that when it did happen I was a little surprised. If a bunch of UH students could get this concept, why couldn’t a group of folks in Austin?

Except that those structural changes are likely gonna create massive economic upheaval, which is probably why Algore’s former boss wisely decided against submitting the Kyoto treaty to the Senate. And, the practical result of such an upheaval would be massive sacrifices for many of us (that is, if you call such things as starving to death “sacrifices”.)

And, as far as Algore’s energy consumption vis-a-vis yours and mine goes: for cryin’ out loud, if the guy is burning through almost a quarter MILLION KWH per year off the power grid, that means someone has to do something to generate all that power - and, in most cases these days, that means they burn coal and/or gas. Buying “credits” to offset this is great, so long as the total number of such “credits” is finite - otherwise, it is simply an exercise in “feel-good”.

~EdT.