Texas Progressives talk this and that

Why is the Railroad Commission allowing a lignite mine to expand when, beside the climate change issues, local residents don't want that?

Former Fetus Forever Fuckward Jonathan Stickland shilling for Ken Paxton — on Steve Bannon's show.

Sarah Palin, trying desperately to stay semi-relevant in today's GOP and East Wingnutistan.

Trump continues to claim the mounting indictments help him. And, that may be true in the GOP primary cycle. In the general election, polling says they'll hurt, and assuming that trials for one or more of these start in the middle of the GOP primary season and continues at least through the end of that, let alone into the general election season, I have no doubt the hurt will increase.

Climate havens are getting touted in the US more and more. In reality, there really is no such thing, and, going beyond the story, touting them is like carbon offsets — a way to try to avoid facing reality.

Off the Kuff stays on the Paxton impeachment beat, with the reminder that the real thing starts September 5

From his second, religion and philosophy-focused blogsite, SocraticGadfly notes, months after having to excommunicate a neo-Nazi pastor, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president Matthew Harrison now has one of Fani Willis' dirty 19 on his hands. And, in other bad religious news, the forged fake James Ossuary is coming to the Metroplex — for big grift and gilt.

Dos Centavos posts a Human Rights Watch report about their recent visit to the Texas Border.

ERCOT's continued conservation pleas show that Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick et al did NOT fix the power grid, just gouged our wallet to help rich utility companies. (It also shows that Californicators who moved to I-35 or east parts of Texas, with "not a dry heat," are wusses.)

Sweetwater is now becoming known for a trash pile of wind turbine blades (partially courtesy of the IRS, which also explains why all the older wind farms near Muenster were refitted a couple of years ago) as much as for its rattlesnake roundup.

For now, the state's takeover of Harris County elections stands.

"I'll take, 'Who's Will Hurd?' for $1,000, Alex."

Happy 80th birthday to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News!

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project says elected Democrats who have endorsed John Whitmire for Mayor must take steps to limit the damage to down-ballot muncipal Houston Democrats from Whitmire's need for strong Republican turnout.    

Franklin Strong cannot see how the Texas school library book "ratings" law can work.  

Jef Rouner reassesses a key scene from the 80s classic The Breakfast Club.  

The Bloggess presents her do-it-yourself horoscope.  

CultureMap breaks the news about Season Five of Love is Blind being set in Houston.

ConservaDems, Status Quo Joe and sheepdogging Bernie and climate change

Oh, it's fun with the Overton Window gang that can't shoot straight!

Status Quo Joe is caving in to Big Coal Boss Hogg Joe Manchin on the climate change of Build Back Better, or Can We Build Something, or whatever. Maybe if we put some of Sinema's Big Pharma Big Bucks drug products inside wind turbines, would she kill Manchin? ConservaDem Jon Tester can stand up for Biden's bill; why can't they?

Meanwhile, St. Bernard of Sanders, fulfilling the sheepdogging of his past and most recently mentioned by Counterpunch for that, blames the media for not knowing what's in the bill. Since there's really not a fixed bill yet, even as Sleepy Joe gives away more, this is sheepdogging. Of course, nobody's asked Bernie about those F-35s for the Vermont National Guard. It's always good to be selectively against more defense spending.

To break the Senate impasse, or Boss Hogg's obstruction, Ron Wyden is now proposing a carbon tax! I'm all for it, but it has zero political chance unless Wyden attaches a carbon tariff, which is the globally right thing to do anyway. I've said more than once, more than ten times, that a carbon tariff, at least to a degree, forces the whole world onto the same carbon emissions page. Sure, there's international measurement issues and cheating concerns. But, there's the same thing with private biz on carbon offsets and cap-and-trade as I type.

But a carbon tax has other devilish details all its own. First, how high do you set it? Second and related, how much below the final price do you start at to phase it in? Third, without making it too painful, how do you do something besides direct rebates to help out carbon taxpayers? (I've argued with Chris Tomlinson and others that there HAS to be some pain for it to work.)

Credit to Wyden for phasing out fossil fuel tax credits as part of his bill. It's stupid indeed for something like the House Ways and Means carbon tax idea to keep them in place.

At the Atlantic, via MSN, Robinson Mayer supports the Clean Energy Program, which Boss Hogg reportedly opposes instead. It's true that we need more renewable energy, especially to recharge electric cars in the future beyond replacing fossil fuel electricity. But, this doesn't have to be an either-or, and shouldn't; both-and is what we need. It's carrot and stick, large scale. Meyer does have one point. A carbon tax leaves the gummint possibly becoming dependent on that revenue. What happens when it does get phased out? This is like funding National Park Service repair catch-ups with money from Interior oil and minerals leases.

This all said, per the one link near top? Tester isn't signed off on all climate change plans, though he is interested in electric tractors, should they come around. (Actually, even with bigger farms, if you're out west and got rooftop solar? An electric

Finally, as the Pentagon is the country's biggest carbon emitter, how do you tax it?

High Country News does it again on climate change issues

Ten months after being called out by me for confusing — or to be less charitable, conflating — a carbon cap and trade system with a carbon tax, High Country News is at it again, now offering a he-said, she-said piece claiming carbon offsets work, but wondering if they might be an excuse for big companies. Given that Eric Niiler works for Wired, shock me that he'd write something like this. And, it's not even he-said, she-said, it''s he-said, he-pretended-she-said. The last two paragraphs reflect this:

(T)here are signs that offsets might help in the long term by forcing carbon-polluting industries to become a bit more creative.  …  (I)t may buy us a bit of time, time that is fast running out.

No, they won't. They'll buy more excuses, is what they will do.

So, they're more than that, more than an excuse for big companies. They go beyond the companies.

They're like a modern version of indulgences for environmentalists. In other words, they're an excuse for middle-class, upper-middle-class and rich neoliberal white environmentalists to not face the need for radical, post-capitalist changes to the domestic and world order. Those largely white neoliberals would include, per my first link, most readership as well as staff of HCN, environmental groups like Sierra Club and its youth movement front Sunrise Movement, and Democrats ripping off a Green New Deal from the Green Party and any actual Socialists who want to join in. 

And, no, that's not a new thought on offsets as indulgences. I blogged about that THIRTEEN years ago. As I did about the degree of difficulty in monitoring such offsets. 

That offsets Niiler's "creativity" claim here:

A Swiss livestock company, for example, sells a special garlic-and-citrus cattle feed supplement to help cows produce less methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. It just gained approval from Verra, a nonprofit that develops standards for carbon offset projects. Farmers who use the feed and lower their methane emissions can then, after an audit, sell the carbon credits as an additional source of income.

If you are going to be a capitalist, also, Niiler, how do you know if this feed blocks as much methane as claimed? What's the carbon cost of the supplement? And? How do you even price other social costs of this versus just biting the bullet and eating less beef (or less dairy from Brown Swiss)?

Why not tell people to eat less meat? Maybe in part because HCN still promotes the myth of the rural West, in spite of it being the most urbanized part of the country and in spite of BLM or USFS fattened cows only producing about 3 percent of US beef?

Showing nothing is new under the sun, Pro Publica wrote about the difficulty in monitoring offset programs in the so-called developing world just last year. Niiler even linked to that (with HCN's usual problem for me, at least on Chrome, of the link refusing to open in a new tab. Or open at all.) Of course, that's why they've been migrated there. It's deliberate. It's even harder to monitor, let alone oversee and run herd on, a tree-planting program in Brazil than one in Oregon. Niiler doesn't even talk about that.

And, all of this ignores the biggest issue. Contra Niiler period, carbon offsets by their nature are just designed to hold carbon emissions flat. They're specifically NOT designed to reduce said emissions, when we desperately need them reduced. Holding carbon emissions flat is like asking the electric chair executioner to drop the voltage from 20,000 to 15,000. He's still going to kill you.

Just click the "carbon offsets" tag below to read more.

Of course, Sierra has been a hypocrite on carbon emissions issues for that long itself.

Greenpeace commits cultural imperialism

I'm sure that, by now, most informed people, especially environmentalists, are well aware of Greenpeace's heaping helping of stupidity and arrogance at Peru's famous Nazca lines.

Yet, some PC-ish types of liberals, or New Left activists continue to try to defend this. (And Greenpeace still has no real apology on its website.)

To those folks, I'm going to hang you by your own petard.

The Nazca figures were made by non-white, indigenous peoples.

Therefore, Greenpeace committed cultural imperialism and you're supporting it. And I hope at least a few of the responsible get the full six years in prison.

“It’s a true slap in the face at everything Peruvians consider sacred,” said Luis Jaime Castillo, the deputy culture minister, after the action by the environmental group on Monday.

There’s your cultural imperialism.

As for questions about whether actual damage was done? Well:

“They are absolutely fragile. They are black rocks on a white background. You walk there and the footprint is going to last hundreds or thousands of years,” Castillo said. “And the line that they have destroyed is the most visible and most recognised of all.”

And, that’s not taking into effect that this may be cryptobiotic soil like in the US Southwest.

Even if not cryptobiotic, the lines were created by a differentiation in soil color below the surface, which Greenpeace disturbed. (See photo below.) In this story, Luis Jaime Castillo, Peru's vice minister for culture, says bluntly:

There is no known technique to restore it to the way it was.

That's the bottom line.

And, they picked the wrong place within Nazca, even, Castillo said:

The hummingbird was in a pristine area, untouched. Perhaps it was the best figure.

Oy.

Two more notes.

One, the activists included people from neighboring Argentina, Brazil and Chile, who definitely should know better, one would think.

Two, despite pledge of cooperation with the government of Peru, there's this:

The group said it would cooperate with authorities. But on Friday a spokesman in Lima, Mike Townsley, said that the activists involved in the incident had left Peru and that the group had not given their names to government officials.

In other words, Greenpeace to Peru says: Eff you. 

Beyond that, it’s a second round of cultural imperialism for white Westerners to be telling Peruvian officials that this was no big deal. So, too is a non-apology about possible "moral offense." Any alleged apology where the actual apologetic statement begins with an "if" isn't an apology.

As for people still trying to defend Greenpeace?

Put down the shovels ...

And, let's crank up the petards in another way.

How much carbon dioxide did Greenpeace use for this (and other stunts of the past week) at a climate conference that set a carbon-busting record and is going to end by probably doing nothing, all while relying on the Church of AlGore's carbon offsets, modern environmentalists' equivalent of medieval Catholic indulgences. (A wrap on the Lima meetings: Yes, they essentially did nothing, while pretending they accomplished something.)

Nazca, post-Greenpeace

Update: Greenpeace US has an actual apology. Too bad the internationals don't have such a full apology; as this piece, which includes the photo at left, reminds us, this is just the latest in a laundry list of stupid Greenpeace actions, which above all include destroying Golden Rice as part of a blanket anti-GMO stance.

It's also not the first time that a dumb stunt by Greenpeace has been culturally insensitive to non-white peoples.

But, this was just a "minor environmental error" to its most ardent defenders.

I asked one a rhetorical question about whether it would be OK to do it to Native American-type sites here in the US or First Nations sites in his Canada and he dodged the issue.

As High Country News describes, the Blythe Intaglios, though not well known, are very similar.

Yeah, right.

And, these were all dumb stunts deliberately decided in advance by a group, where nobody apparently said, "Hey, wait a minute."

That's another part of the problem. Groupthink.

We're going to need big carbon straws by 2030

That's the consensus of the latest part of an updated climate change report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It says, per the link, that, if we don't do more to limit carbon emissions by 2030, that the only way to stop major global warming is going to be by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

And of course, as the story notes, no such technology exists today, and it likely won't in 2030.

Plus, as the story doesn't note, such technology itself would be a major carbon producer. Can you imagine the energy involved?

And, for some conservatives and moderates who accept that some degree of change is happening, but that we can adapt? Er, this:

Even as the early effects of climate change are starting to be felt around the world, the panel concluded that efforts are lagging not only in reducing emissions, but in adapting to the climatic changes that have become inevitable.

That, too, will cost money and willpower.

On the containment, not the mitigation, here's the bottom, bottom line:

As scientists can best figure, the target requires that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, stay below 500 parts per million. The level recently surpassed 400, and at present growth rates will surpass 500 within a few decades.

Actually, even at current rates of change, we'll be at at least 450 ppm by 2030. 

And, per the top of the story, here's what that will mean in detail:

If emissions do overshoot the target, the report found, future generations would likely have to develop ways to pull greenhouse gases out of the air. It is fairly clear this will be technically possible. It could be achieved, for instance, by growing bioenergy crops that take up carbon dioxide, burning the resulting fuel, and then injecting the emissions into underground formations. But the large-scale use of land to grow energy crops would compete with food production, already under strain as a consequence of the planetary warming.

Machinery might be developed that could directly extract greenhouse gases from the air; in fact, early work on such systems has begun. But experts have said the costs, safety and practicality of such techniques cannot be foreseen today. They believe it would be much cheaper to find ways to avoid putting the gases into the air in the first place.

And, even growing bioenergy crops is optimistic. Where?

And, this is already going to be problematic. I've blogged earlier about the fading future of the Colorado River. The Southwest, and even more the Pacific Coast, continue to face drought, a drought that may be exacerbated by jet stream changes in turn affected by climate change.

Shareholder resolutions to cut carbon sound fine, but they're worth little more than the paper upon which they're written. And, they may end up being as much  of "carbon indulgences" as planting trees for carbon offsets has become.

The only realistic answer starts with a carbon tax domestically combined with carbon tariffs on imports, to keep American businesses from further "cheating" by exporting carbon dioxide generation.

And, given that West Texas is expected to get drier, as well as hotter, with climate change, and a lot of central and eastern Texas depend on it, via downstream river flows, for a lot of water?

Texas climate change denialists should remember the old Fram commercial: You can pay me a little bit now or a whole lot later. 

More proof here: Flow into the Texas Colorado River's Highland Lakes was the second-lowest on record last year.

15 ExxonValdezes — Why BP is working to hide the spill truth

It looks like BP's Gulf oil spill may be gushing out as much oil every four days as the Exxon Valdez spilled off the coast of Alaska.

Well, I guess if your credibility is just this side, or just the other side, of Exxon's, and is built on publish relations shinola apparent lying, you've got good temptations to continue more of the same, as now seems clear.

The level of apparent cover-up? Pretty bad.

Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.

Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, were originally asked by BP to conduct flow rate measurements of undersea vents then BP changed its mind. And it won't say why.

Probably, though, because it's trying to hide this ... the same reason it won't let independent researchers see its underwater video:

BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.

OK, BP says it could be two months before it gets the "bleeding" stopped. That is 15 consecutive four-day ExxonValdez spill equivalents, if the worst predictions are true.

The Guardian has further independent commentary on the likely size of the spill.

That said, is it fair to call the Obama Administration "slow" on this?

Hell, yes. Given BP's past safety record, from Prudhoe Bay to Houston, over the past decade, notably under the leadership of current CEO Tony Hayward, it should have been skeptical of BP's claims about the size of the problem from the moment it happened.

And, given BushCo-era shenanigans, it should have been reforming the Minerals Management Service before the blowout. Obama himself could have included that as part of his offshore drilling proposal.

It's been helping oil drillers deliberately avoid getting environmental impact permits from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“You simply are not allowed to conclude that the drilling will have an impact,” said one scientist who has worked for the minerals agency for more than a decade. “If you find the risks of a spill are high or you conclude that a certain species will be affected, your report gets disappeared in a desk drawer and they find another scientist to redo it or they rewrite it for you.”

AND ... Our Beloved Neoliberal Leader Obama's proposed reform of the Minerals Management Service apparently won't touch this NOAA work-around.

(That's despite his promise today to get tough with the oil and gas drilling industry, claiming it was time to move beyond finger pointing. The "cozy relationship" he mentioned? Isn't that, too, part and parcel of neoliberalism?)

So, Obamiacs, quit defending him on environmental issues, or his response to this tragic, but quite avoidable, catastrophe.

Meanwhile, speaking of environmental issues, weather forecasters expect an above-average year for Atlantic hurricanes.

What might a few big storms do to that oil?

Update, May 15: Meanwhile, another government entity, the EPA, readily signed off on BP's never-before done, never-before tested, use of deep sea dispersents.

Oxygen waters on the seafloor around the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe have already fallen by 30 percent and will fall more.

Meanwhile, there are oil and gas plumes from just below the surface to 4,000 feet deep.

Researchers Vernon Asper and Arne Dierks said in Web posts that the plumes were "perhaps due to the deep injection of dispersants which BP has stated that they are conducting."

In other words, the dispersants may be contributing to the oil-caused deoxygenation.

That's why BP's "backup" plan to use dispersants in deepwater for the first time, without testing, is so criminal.

The decision (to allow this) by the Environmental Protection Agency angered state officials and fishermen, who complained that regulators ignored their concerns about the effects on the environment and fish.

"The EPA is conducting a giant experiment with our most productive fisheries by approving the use of these powerful chemicals on a massive, unprecedented scale," John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, said in a news release.

BP. Blatantly Polluting. And, the technocratic neoliberalocity is cooperating.

Not so fast on carbon offsets, Al Gore

Bernd Heinrich notes that Kyoto provided offsets for planting trees, but non for preserving them. And, Copenhagen didn't address that.

So, as he starkly puts it, would-be self-professed environmentalists have incentives to clear-cut forests and then replace them with monocrop trees, but not to preserve anything.

Global warming: 6C rise by 2100, and carbon offsets exposed

The Guardian reports there’s more and more evidence, supporting that likelihood, namely that natural carbon sinks are possibly becoming less effective.

More on the fading efficacy of carbon sinks, in this case, the oceans’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide, is here.

Hence, the “carbon offsets exposed.” Al Gore and others will have to tell American jet-setters they need to do something more real.

However, not everybody accepts the research findings on the less effective natural carbon sinks. Still, we know they're not getting more effective, and the rapidity of rise of carbon emissions would indicate the possibility, at least, of lessened effectiveness.

Climate change roundup – Hansen challenges Big Oil, cataracts, EU pollution

NASA’s James Hanson, the prophet of global warming, says Big Oil is using tactics taken from Big Tobacco to mislead the public.

“Whats become clear to me in the past several years is that both the executive branch and the legislative branch are strongly influenced by special fossil fuel interests,” he said, referring to the providers of coal, oil and natural gas and the energy industry that burns them.

In a recent survey of what concerns people, global warming ranked 25th.

“The industry is misleading the public and policy makers about the cause of climate change. And that is analogous to what the cigarette manufacturers did. They knew smoking caused cancer, but they hired scientists who said that was not the case.” …

While he recognizes that he has stepped outside the traditional role of scientists as researchers rather than as public policy advocates, he says he does so because “in this particular situation we’ve reached a crisis.”

The policy makers, “the people who need to know are ignorant of the actual status of the matter, and the gravity of the matter, and most important, the urgency of the matter,” he charged.

“It’s analogous to an engineer who sees that there’s a flaw in the space shuttle before it is to be launched. You don’t have any choice. You have to say something. That’s really all that I'm doing,” he explained.

Actually, as he has at times before, I think Hansen is being too generous to BushCo officials. They’re not ignorant. They’re willing denialists, and there’s no other way to put it.

Meanwhile, WWF is criticizing EU carbon trading.

Power companies in just five EU nations could reap windfall profits of up to 71 billion euros over five years thanks to Europe's emissions trading scheme, the green group WWF claimed Monday.

It said the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) gives no incentive to move away from the most polluting coal-fired power stations and warned that Poland and other eastern European members were lobbying against a planned overhaul of the system after 2012.

Up until that time, EU polluting permits are given away for free; they’re supposed to be sold after that.

Interestingly, 2012 is when the current Kyoto Treaty expires. The EU isn’t a babe in the woods.

And, climate change may cause more cataracts. Australian doctors think it could also increase some respiratory diseases.

Carbon-dioxide offsets: Lots of hype and hucksterism, light on reality?

The more we learn about carbon offsets, the more they appear to be little more than feel-good hucksterism.

“An Inconvenient Truth” is a good example of that, especially feel-good hucksterism purchased for pennies on the dollar:

The Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” touted itself as the world's first carbon-neutral documentary.

The producers said that every ounce of carbon emitted during production — from jet travel, electricity for filming and gasoline for cars and trucks — was counterbalanced by reducing emissions somewhere else in the world. It only made sense that a film about the perils of global warming wouldn’t contribute to the problem.

Co-producer Lesley Chilcott used an online calculator to estimate that shooting the film used 41.4 tons of carbon dioxide and paid a middleman, a company called Native Energy, $12 a ton, or $496.80, to broker a deal to cut greenhouse gases elsewhere. The film's distributors later made a similar payment to neutralize carbon dioxide from the marketing of the movie.

This is Reason No. 1 that it’s little good than hucksterism, and why many conservatives (and not a few real environmentalists) are suspicious of Al Gore, Hollywood crusaders, etc.

It’s more than ridiculous, it’s bullshit to think that you could buy off the CO2 output of a major movie for less than $500.

Almost as ridiculous as this:

For less than $100 a year, even a Hummer can be pollution-free — at least on paper.

Carbon offsets look so hucksterish that I wouldn’t be surprised to see Preznit Shrub getting in on the game soon enough.

Here’s another issue: nobody knows whether, let alone how much, carbon offsets actually promote greenhouse gas reductions.

Offset companies often have vague requirements to determine if their potential investments would actually lead to additional reductions.

Native Energy says it looks for projects that need offset revenue to survive -- a difficult standard, since the projects are expensive and the offset payments are relatively small. But even if a project can stand on its own, it can still qualify for the money if it is novel or simply “not business as usual,” according to the company's website.

That definition has allowed Native Energy and other offset companies to claim the carbon reductions from projects in which they have played minor roles.

Plus, not mentioned in this article, we have the backdrop of the European market overselling offsets last year.

Nor does the article get into how the price for carbon offsets was set where it was in the first place. The problem is, the current price is so low it offers easy guilt relief without making people really think about how much CO2 they put out, nor about how much its cost may be.

Offsets are so convenient that they may foster a false sense that global warming can be easily solved when the hard and expensive work remains undone.

Read the whole article — five web pages of it — to get the details.

John Dingell being a little turd on global warming

The New York Times reports the Michigan Democrat is planning to introduce a carbon tax bill, including a hike in the gas tax, simply to try to prove Americans don’t want to pay for it.

“I sincerely doubt that the American people will be willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” said Mr. Dingell, whose committee will be drafting a broad bill on climate change this fall.

“I will be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill, just to sort of see how people think about this,” he continued. “When you see the criticism I get, I think you’ll see the answer to your question.”

Here’s what I think Dingell is trying to do.

Hold the new CAFÉ standards passed in the Senate hostage in the House. How much will the House cave, if this is the correct interpretation? And how much will Dingell compromise?

That said, this is a dishonest bill. It says nothing about what America could save with carbon taxes in place, whether from weather-related, pollution-related, or job creation-related causes.

But, given John Dingell’s blindsight history of protecting the Big Three at all costs, it isn’t surprising.

Now, that said, I hope other Democrats take him up at face value, point out the savings side, and call his bluff. We need something like this. After all, for all the good CAFÉ standards do, coal-fired electric power plants are far and away the top emitters of carbon dioxide, well ahead of automobile traffic.

Carbon offsets like medieval indulgences? “Amen” to that

Or, as another person quoted in this article says, the idea of purchasing a “carbon offset,” to get three trees planted to make up for the carbon dioxide from a plane flight or whatever, smacks of so much of today’s America — long on consumerism, light on sacrifice. (Perhaps that’s part of why Shrub hasn’t called for any “sacrifice” related to the invasion of Iraq.)

Here’s the quote referenced above:

“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation,” said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. “Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins.”

“This whole game is badly in need of a modern Martin Luther,” Mr. Hayes added.

The article goes on to note environmentalists are split on the issue. Well, I’m one of the ones who agrees with Hayes.

Plus, there’s the question about just how true-to-life this market is:

Hayes said there were legitimate companies and organizations that help people and companies measure their emissions and find ways to cut them, both directly and indirectly by purchasing certain kinds of credits. But overall, he said, an investment in such credits — given the questions about their reliability — should be looked at more as conventional charity (presuming you check to be sure the projects are real) and less as something like a license to binge on private jet travel.

I agree that it’s like buying wood from a sustainable harvest forest… there’s few such claims that pan out.

Instead, this lets people avoid on insisting that Boeing and Airbus get to work on designing more efficient jetliners, as well as looking at their own lifestyles more carefully.