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RUSH: Dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! The new “peace movement,” is the global warming update crowd led by Algore.
(Playing of “Ball of Fire” parody update theme song.)
That’s our buddy Paul Shanklin as Algore, one of three update themes in the rotation for our global warming update: Ball of Fire, portrayed vocally by Algore. A blogger, ladies and gentlemen, has uncovered that the carbon credits — these “carbon offsets” that Al Gore buys — are actually from a company that he owns, and apparently they don’t sell these credits or these offsets to anybody other than Gore. You can’t buy them off of their website.
So Gore is paying…himself. Literally, Al Gore is paying himself to reduce his carbon footprint. His carbon footprint is not getting smaller. His carbon footprint, if anything, is enlarging — which is all bogus. I couldn’t care less, but he’s making a big deal out of it. The blogger is Ecotality.com. As one commenter posting on the few blogs covering the Gore story yesterday put it, The Gorical is chairman and founding partner of Generation Investment Management, LLP. That’s a boutique international investment firm that invests other people’s money for a fee in the stocks of green companies. So when Al Gore beats the drum for possible future global warming he’s also drumming up business, and he’s profiteering from hyping the global warming crisis.
In a nutshell, Algore consumes large amounts of carbon-based electricity while he trumpets the global warming crisis that drives up the value of green companies like the one in which he invests in their stocks, and carbon offsets are a dodgy way for someone to claim to be carbon neutral even as they consume large amounts of carbon-based energy. The notion that selling carbon offsets actually helps the environment is taken as a given by those who sell them and by those who buy them. But at this point it’s unproven. While some bloggers and pundits have likened carbon offsets to the indulgences of pre-Reformation Catholic church, sold to the wealthy so they could continue to sin, the writer of the blog The Virginian says that carbon offsets are more like the sumptuary laws of medieval times, laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. The bottoms line is that this company that Algore buys his carbon offsets from is owned by Algore. He’s investing in himself. He’s not losing any money at all in this, and nobody else can buy offsets from this company except Algore.
There is an update to all this, too — via the blog on the website of carbon offset marketer TerraPass, where it was recently found — a New York Times story that’s skeptical of carbon offsets. Some carbon-offset firms have begun to acknowledge that certain investments like tree-planting may be ineffective, and they are shifting their focus to what they say is reliable activity, like wind turbines, cleaner-burning stoves, or buying up credits that otherwise would allow companies to pollute. The whole thing is a scam, folks. It is a giant, 100% scam. This is a money-making routine for Algore and others involved in this whole thing, but here’s the important thing. It is a precursor for an international or global tax on the use of energy. The French are posing it. The United Nations has proposed it — and while you may laugh and poke fun at the idea of these offsets (and we have been doing that ourselves), these things are very ominous. They’re going to become expected. They’re going to be expected to be part of our daily lives.
It’s going to end up being an environmental tax on all of us as an extra cost of fuel or airfare or buying SUVs or whatever else the wackos claim is causing the greatest amount of pollution and thus global warming. If you cut down trees in your yard, you’ll pay a tax. If you don’t recycle you’ll pay a tax. If you pick paper or plastic you’ll pay a tax. If you don’t buy organic, you’ll pay a tax. Using Aqua Net, having nice homes, having second homes, all that could be subject to taxation based on this whole carbon offset problem and the size of your footprint. We’re now seeing the initial drumbeat for this. It’s the only way the leftists can assuage their guilt, but it’s going to be forced on all of us.
If you don’t snap to on this and understand exactly what this is about and the scope and the deeply rooted tentacles of this scam, it’s not going to go away. The little people — we, the little people, we are — about to be hosed again while the elite continue their lifestyles with righteous indignation for all that do not worship at the feet of the Earth Mother Gaia. Mark my words on this, folks. They will totally exempt themselves from any lifestyle changes just as libs always do with every policy they make. Two laws, two rules, two sets of them: one for you and me and one for them.
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RUSH: It’s a good thing that I do not allow myself to be offended and it’s a good thing I do not allow myself to be hurt by others, because if I were of weaker fortitude, I would be crushed at this very moment. Because I just checked the e-mail, and there’s a bunch of subscribers to my website — and I know some libs have infiltrated there; they’ve purchased subscriptions for access to me — writing: Rush, how do you know Gore is buying carbon offsets from himself? You just make this up. Ladies and gentlemen, to have my honor challenged in such a fashion is absolutely ridiculous. There is no question. The name of the company is Generation Investment Management. Gore helped found it. It’s Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for carbon offsets. This firm invests money in solar, wind and other projects that supposedly reduce energy consumption around the globe. Guess who’s chairman? Algore! Algore is chairman of Generation Investment Management, and presumably draws an income, and presumably will make money on its investments if they prosper.
In other words, it’s exactly as I said: He’s buying his carbon offsets from himself through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself — and you can’t. You can’t buy carbon offsets from this outfit. As the NewsBusters puts it, Noel Sheppard: it’s not that he’s buying carbon offsets; he’s buying stocks in companies that this outfit invests in. These are not even carbon offsets. He’s just calling them that! He’s buying stock in companies, and he’s claiming that buying stock in these companies equals a carbon offset and allows him to continue to fly around with his giant jet, making a huge carbon footprint and so forth — and telling us that makes it all okay. More important than all this, he stands to benefit financially in a huge way if more and more people buy into this junk science. There’s hardly any evidence at all that Gore’s money is going to purchase carbon offsets at all, and even if it was, that’s a scam! Planting trees! Putting cork in the tailpipes of cows to block gas — farts, for those of you in Rio Linda!