Earlier, I pounded on Nick Coleman for repeating the talking-point trope about Algore’s store-bought “carbon-neutrality”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Via Jay Reding<\/a>, we see\u00a0the Economist does, too<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is, of course, ridiculous.\u00a0 When you donate money to build a new windfarm, you don’t take any of the old, polluting power offline; you increase the supply of power, reducing the price until others are encouraged to buy more carbon-emitting power.\u00a0 On the margin, it may make some difference, since demand for electricity is not perfectly elastic, but nowhere near the one-for-one equivalence that carbon offsets would seem to suggest.\u00a0 Especially since the worst offenders, big coal-fired plants, are not the ones that renewables will substitute for; solar and wind power are not good replacements for baseload power.\u00a0 Instead, renewables are likely to take relatively clean (and expensive) natural gas plants offline, since those are the ones that provide “extra” power to the system. Similarly, by giving villagers in Goa energy-saving CFL bulbs, you do not lessen the amount of electricity consumed; rather, you make it possible for other people to purchase the extra energy freed up by more efficient lightbulbs.\u00a0 This may be excellent poverty policy, but it does not lessen the carbon footprint of your international flight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0Reding (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n Gore\u2019s not even close to \u201ccarbon-neutral.\u201d It\u2019s not physically possible to consume as much as he does and plant enough trees to make a difference.<\/em> It\u2019s all a way of deflecting the very well warranted charges of hypocrisy being leveled against him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s worse than that, of course; the Economist<\/em> piece notes that Algore’s immense power usage is after <\/em>the amount saved by the “greeniness” of the Gore mansion, the solar panels, etc, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n Read the whole thing.\u00a0 Keep it handy the next time someone tries to use “carbon-neutrality” as a sop for Algore’s extravagance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier, I pounded on Nick Coleman for repeating the talking-point trope about Algore’s store-bought “carbon-neutrality”.\u00a0 Via Jay Reding, we see\u00a0the Economist does, too. This is, of course, ridiculous.\u00a0 When you donate money to build a new windfarm, you don’t take any of the old, polluting power offline; you increase the supply of power, reducing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}