Thursday
May152014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day, hypocrisy edition
The average person who says they care about climate change actually has a substantially worse than average [carbon] footprint. Generally that’s because they tend to have a bit more money, and they tend to be people who like to think of themselves as multicultural and like to get out and see the world. Which means that they’re flying around a lot, and all that flying generally outweighs any other green lifestyle choices that they’ve made. You have a lot of people who are using reusable bags and water bottles, driving a Prius, maybe eating a bit more of a veggie friendly diet. But then they’re flying to Bali or South Africa or something once a year.
Ian Monroe, CEO of Oroeco. From here.
Reader Comments (22)
How about tax thresholds based on greenery? Those who were genuinely frugal or poor enough would get a decent tax break and those who kept a Prius as their shopping car and visited the Maldives regularly (to make sure they hadn't sunk) would be in the highest band. Who could object..?
...and foremost among them was Christina Figueres, who said in her recent auto-flagellation at St Paul's: "..last week I was in Bangladesh.. in Tonga last month..." Gosh how we sympathise with all the climate suffering she's had to witness.
Indeed mate.
The scam of carbon offsets are indeed Bullshit, as are all religious indulgences.
Alas, I find it difficult to choose, to select which bit, which lunacy is the greatest lie, scam, boondoggle out of all the green agenda but the stupidity of Carbon offsets is right up there, somewhere at the top of a very big list.
Carbon Offset Projects trick local natives out of their rainforests swapping logging rights for worthless Carbon Credits..
Jetting off only once a year? Bwasahahaha, love their sense of humour :)
Mailman
Indeed! This is how hard IPCC scientists have been working on your benefit to save the planet.
- AR5 Scoping Meeting, 13-17 July, Venice (Italy) 2009
- 31st Session of the IPCC , 26-29 Oct., Bali (Indonesia) 2009
- 32nd Session of the IPCC, 11-14 Oct., Busan (Republic of Korea) 2009
- WG1 1st LAM , 8-11 Nov., Kunming (China) 2010
- WG2:1st LAM 11-14 Jan., Tsukuba (Japan) 2011
- WG3: 1st LAM, 12-15 July, Changwon City (Republic of Korea) 2011
- WG2: 2nd 12-15 Dec., San Francisco 2011
- IPCC B45 Synth 13-14 Mar., Geneva (Switzerland) 2012
- WG3: 2nd LAM, 19-23 Mar., Wellington (New Zealand) 2012
- WG1: 3rd LAM16-20 April, Marrakech (Morocco) 2012
- Synth: CWT 1, 11-13 June, Geneva (Switzerland) 2012
- WG2: 3rd LAM, 23-26 Oct., Buenos Aires (Argentina) 2012
- WG3: 3rd LAM3rd, 5-9 Nov., Vigo (Spain) 2012
- WG1: 4th LAM, 13-19 Jan., Hobart (Australia) 2013
- Synth: CWT- 2 , 10-12 June, Oslo (Norway) 2013
- WG3: 4th LAM, 1-5 July, Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) 2013
- WG2: 4th LAM, 15-19 July, Bled (Slovenia) 2013
- 12th WG I 36th Session of the IPCC, 23-26 Sept., Stockholm (Sweden) 2013
- Government review of final draft SPM 28 October - 20 December 2013
- synth: CWT- 3 , 7-10 Jan., De Bilt (The Netherlands) 2014
- 10th WG II Session and 38th Session of the IPCC, 25-29 March, Yokohama 2014
- 12th WG III Session 7-11 Apr., and 39th Session of the IPCC 2014 12 April, Berlin (Germany)
- synth:CWT- 3 bis, 14-15 April, Berlin (Germany) 2014
- syntth: CWT- 4, 30 June - 3 July, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) 2014
- synth:CWT- 5, 24-25 Oct, Copenhagen (Denmark) 2014
- synth: 40th Session of the IPCC, Copenhagen 27-31 October, 2014
Move along please. Nothing to see here
#greensgobyair
Absolutely true.l see AGW, like feminism and multiculturalism as class warfare and the Guardian is exactly the right newspaper to fight it. It's about contempt for the smelly, dirty, polluting masses. It's cool to love the planet while hating the lower orders.
I saw a post from an ultra cool female musician who was enraged to be given a planet destroying plastic cup. This was on a flight from Vancouver to play a private gig in Moscow, complete with Mafia bodyguard.
http://www.nme.com/news/grimes/73537
He's talking about Marcus Brigstocke!
I think we should be supporting this 100%. Nothing like putting your CO2 where your mouth is.
Changing one mind at a time.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/05/13/ezra-levant-not-one-drop-of-poisoned-water/
Re: ‘Not One Drop Of Poisoned Water,’ Ezra Levant, May 13.
I have to admit that I was concerned about was fracking, since the possibility of polluting the ground water would have grave consequences. We have experience of surface petroleum contamination and how its consequences and can be managed. But fracking contamination could contaminate a whole aquifer, spreading over hundreds of miles, and we have no idea how it might be cleaned up. This, of course, is what the alarmists latched onto and so deliberately falsified.
Well, Ezra Levant’s book excerpt illustrates that what we have here is a paper tiger. I had no idea that fracking had been going on for at least 60 years without one single instance of aquifer contamination, or that others had recognized the seriousness of the problem and formed The Ground Water Protection Council, which has “not a single incident” of groundwater contamination as a result of fracking. I have ordered a copy of Mr. Levant’s book, Groundswell, from my book store.
Patrick MacKinnon, Victoria.
I was interested to note, while going back through some older magazine articles, that the crew at Top Gear, so reviled by the trendy 'ptogressives' world-wide, drove a mid-sized BMW and a Toyota Prius from London to Berlin and back two or three years ago: the Prius was markedly thirstier and slower en route than the Beemer.
But it's trendy to care for the planet by making absurd decisions based on a basic lack of engineering and scientific knowledge.
The Toyota Pious; a car with 2 engines considered by some to be green
The next time I see one at the traffic lights with the internal combustion engine running, I'm going to wind down the window and hurl abuse (not really, not my style)
One of my favourite examples of this is an article by the legendary Johann Hari, who describes (caveat lector, of course, with anything by Hari) a fossil-fuelled travel binge he embarked upon after "sitting in my air-conditioned flat in London" and discovering that much of Bangladesh was to disappear by 2050.
http://www.coveredinbees.org/node/238
What followed was "a month-long road trip across a country that we – you, me and everyone we know – are killing", presumably after arriving there by air. He travels over ridges and bridges "on the back of a motorbike", then goes by car, "hurtling through the darkness at 120mph", then goes by boat with "a huge chugging engine attached to the front" - to a randomly selected island to "see if the seas were really rising" - then travels across the island by "tuc-tuc – a motorbike with a carriage on the back", then by boat again, etc., and so forth, and then back, one assumes, to catch his return flight.
Alas, it might all have been made up, going by what we now know about the man. But I like to think it wasn't - the image of Johann Hari hurtling around Bangladesh on a bewildering variety of CO2-belching machines for days on end and simultaneously emoting about climate change, I think, just deserves to be true.
Spot on . I would count myself as one who does follow most of the guidelines regarding eco schemes e.g recycling, composting etc. Yet , I have literally been round the world in the last twelve months. However, the ability to travel has radically altered the general consensus on many issues, climate change being one of them. To keep the masses cooped in their own backyards would suit our masters and propagandists in that we would have to accept their lofty and biased view of issues. Carry on flying.
This is closer to the truth than the left vs right thing we had yesterday.
For some people their outward persona is soo important. They want to appear "caring", "progressive", "modern". This is how they approach any issue that comes along - not from any personal experience or deeply-held belief or intellectual analysis. It's not "what would Jesus do" - it's more likely to be "what would George Clooney say".
Thomas Sowell recognised this trend in his "Vision of the Anointed" book. The sub-title says it all:
"Look how noble I am. How progressive. How much I care."
Because it is all just a show then the more abstract the caring, the better. If you pretend to "care deeply about your local park" then others may expect you to do something about this - even it's just spending time there. Much better to "care about the climate in Bangladesh in 70 years time". Oh the humanity! No need for any personal action - just tweet the message out and "like" stuff on Facebook.
This persona thing is what attracts many to leftist causes.
These Yaparrazzi are not truly of the left, unlike some people on here. They are just bandwagoning. Latest example is that French Pickety chap - so easy to tweet out some approval of his magnum opus (no need to read it at all) and tut-tut about abstract themes like "inequality". Mmmmm feeling good already - yes another fair-trade smoothie, please.
I've got a lot of respect for real lefties, who have a sincere and coherent vision of a different way of life. Let's cut them a bit of slack.
I would love to know how many of the green elite, whether in government, campaign groups or green industry, spent their gap years travelling around South-East Asia, Africa, South America etc. Having visited some less developed parts of the world myself, I'm familiar with the typical hippy reaction that 'they' seem so happy, life is so simple, they don't spend their weekends acquiring possessions; 'we', on the other hand, are destroying our environment, with all these awful schools and universities and hospitals littering the landscape, all these terrible trains and ships and lorries powering industry and generating wealth, grotesque water treatment plants providing safe water to drink, all contributing to our shockingly low child mortality and disgustingly long lifespans.
It's understandable that some of these gap year tourists might feel that 'something must be done'. I just wish they wanted to focus on improving the lives of others, instead of trying to turn back the tide of development at home.
Jack Hughes
Exactly. I tweeted back to Canadian author Doug Coupland. 'You be careful Doug, if you stopped believing in Climate Change, you would be an un-dude which would be very scary for you'.
quoted in 'The Enemies of Progress' by Austin Williams
"Take Toni Vernelli, vegan campaign co-ordinator of the animal rights organisation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who explains that she had an abortion and sterilisation because, for her, ‘every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.’
"Now Vernelli is able to take guilt-free holidays to South Africa because, ‘We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint.’
Toni Vernelli quoted in Natasha Courtenay-Smith and Morag Turner, ‘Meet the women who won’t have babies—because they’re not eco friendly’"
Daily Mail, 21st November 2007
These people are outside the human race.
So how many times do you need to reuse supermarket bags, to offset flying to Bali or South Africa ?