Why can't you piece together this article, Teresa?

Seems clear to me. Gore's climate change crusade has nothing to do with furthering world peace. The award was a joke. It makes a mockery of the award. Of course, it's been a joke for more than a few years now. Jimmy Carter? Kofi Annan? Yassir Arafat?

Who's next, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

How does Global Climate Change have nothing to do with World Peace?

I don't get it: An attempt to get the world to put aside their petty differences and stop fighting over dwindeling resources and work together to come up with a sustainable solution that will avert a global disaster has nothing to do with World Peace?

Then what the hell DOES?

And you didn't really just compare Jimmy Carter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did you? I mean really, how many houses has Ahmadinejad built for homeless people?

Sheesh.

In your attempt to blast me for my "comparison" of Carter to Ahmadinejad, you missed how he has already been compared to Arafat.

I don't know about you, but I have never heard Al Gore say "Please stop fighting for oil and natural gas and work together..." Never, not once.

What I DO hear, however, is how China, India, and Korea (and others) are excluded from "world" treaties on pollution and green house gas emitions.

Al Gore's motives have nothing to do with world peace or even global warming. He's attempting to build his own empire. He's doing all he can to gain wealth and power by selling Carbon Offsets to the rest of the world. If he believed even half of what he's spouting then he'd at least make a small attempt at practicing what he preaches. Do you really think that buying Carbon Offsets solves anything - other than falsely relieving guilt? Do you really think that Mr. Gore believes it?

It's a power grab, plain and simple. You of all people should see that.

So, Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa promoted world peace more than Carter such that Carter is undeserving by comparison? That just seems patently false. maybe what you are really upset about is Reagan not getting one?

Just a note: Al Gore is for entrepreneurial/market solutions to global warming. he believes we can improve our economy and the environment at the same time and he acts on it and he appears to be correct. I thought that is what the conservative or libertarian position was in favor of. So, I don't understand the empire attack. Actually, I just realized I may understand it even less than i thought. are you saying Al Gore really wants total world domination so as to make us his minions? But in a bad way, unlike G. Bush or the Christian Coalition?

But thank you for being the cause of my coming across this adorable statement:
1948 no award Apparently it would have been awarded to Mahatma Gandhi had he not been assassinated.
: )

Mark,

1) China has 1.2 billion people, we have 270 million, yet they produce a little over half the CO2 emissions that we do. Their cars already slightly exceed ours in fuel efficiency, and are projected to widen the gap precipitously in the next few years if nothing chages here.

China, and other emerging economies with massive populations will have a much more difficult and expensive time of re-tooling their economies to suit emission standards, and having them reduce emissions in parity with us would be impossible. They can't support the people they HAVE with the economies they currently have. Those economies must grow prodigeously to prevent a further humanitarisn crisis.

China is taking drastic (even draconian) measures in population control and reduction, as well as incremental economic reform. The time will come when they can be expected to do more.

As for Al Gore building his own empire...is that an echo of the cynical claim that he was just pushing the internet to drive his tech stocks up? Please. Al Gore works his ass off passing legislation to enable the internet to become what it is, goes out and speaks, telling people what the internet will one day become, and all he gets is flack, gets called a loon and a crazy man...and then when he akwardly tries to remind people of what he said, and how it more-or-less came true, he gets quote-mangled and accused of claiming to "invent the internet".

Now, when he's talking about Global Warming, supposedly, he's just trying to make a killing in Carbon offsets? I'm not even aware that he has any interest in a company that sells them, except as a customer...but maybe you can point me to some information that will clear that up. It just hasn't fallen into my lap.

How do you think buying carbon offsets don't work? Sure, some are better than others, but all it is is a free-market way to combine people's power to make individual effort add up more efficiently. I can turn my lights off when I'm not in a room, but that is a very small savings in greenhous gas emissions...especially since the power company doesn't lessen the amount of coal it burns to keep the power on just because one light gets shut off (cumulatively, of course, we make a difference there as well) But suppose I buy some carbon offsets from a campany, and they take all of the money from the offsets they sell and use it to capture and sequester the mathane out-put of several huge landfills? This is a big difference.

Or the company uses the money for research into making a more durable, efficient and/or inexpensive solar collecting material. or better wind power generation. There's lots of ways they can make a difference.

OMG you just don't get it. Carbon offsets don't offset anything.

Gore claims to live a "carbon neutral" lifestyle because of all the carbon offsets he purchases. That's just crazy! The only way to live a carbon neutral lifestyle is to not live at all.

So let me get this argument straight. We all should live a carbon neutral lifestyle. So we should all buy carbon offsets to match our carbon footprint. Just how does this reduce carbon emissions? Just how does this prevent global warming? All it does is allow the rich (Al Gore) to continue to live their ultra-lavish lifestyle free of guilt - because they can afford to purchase the offsets. In actuality, he contributes much more to global warming than the rest of us.

From: www worldnetdaily com / news / article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54528
"Gore has described the lifestyle he and his wife Tipper live as "carbon neutral," meaning he tries to offset any energy usage, including plane flights and car trips, by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere."

But it turns out he pays for his extra-large carbon footprint through Generation Investment Management, a London-based company with offices in Washington, D.C., for which he serves as chairman."

Other links:
www riehlworldview com / carnivorous_conservative/2007/03/al_gores_inconv.html

from billhobbs com/2007/02/more_on_gore.html
"Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he "buys" his "carbon offsets" from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn't buy "carbon offsets" through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks."

Mark,

You obviously don't understand how carbon offsets work. Conservation is a short-term solution, and as many conservatives love to endlessly point out it does not contribute to the economy, but instead puts a drag on it. Therefore, Gore's position, and many other people's by the way, is to instead invest money (from buying carbon offsets) in sustainable, long term solutions that will eventually pay off in economic growth AND energy production AND environmental preservation in the future.

All conservation does is slow the train down. So, what the Carbon offset plan does, is allow people riding the train (because we kind of all have to anyway) to pay for the tracks to be re-routed ahead of us (in addition to conserving to slow the train down for now, giving us more time to develop solutions.)

So you my previous examples are not good enough? Here's some more.

Carbon offset money is being used to install wind turbines, tidal turbines, research solar technology, harvest methane waste from landfills, plant new trees, save rainforest acerage, research pyrolysis (combination technology that will simultaneaoously produce fuel gases, and sequester carbon in charcol which can be sued as ferilizer).


The benefit to the economy is, in part, the flexibility and efficiency that it brings to the CO2 reduction problem. Say you own an energy-intensive buisiness. Retooling your business for conservation will cost you, in investment in conservation technology, lost production, etc. However, instead of losing those profits, only to reduce the amount of energy you use (increasingly expensive energy), you can buy carbon offsets from a comapny that develops a new way to generate sustainable energy. Down the road, you will save money when the sustanable energy comes back to you in the form of lower energy bills. If you choose, you can then invest in more efficient technology to run your plant at a time when you find it to be economically stratigic to do so.

There is a very long list of ways that the money spent on Carbon offsets will halt global warming.

The profits to be made are not so much from the selling of the carbon offsets themselves, but from the pay-offs that they will generate later in developed tech, lowered costs of energy, and economic efficiency.

It's actually quite brilliant, and of course, like everything else he's involved with, later he'll point out that he knew it would work well all along, and them people will laugh and say "ha ha" Al Gore says he invented the Carbon Offset".

Waxman is much smarter. He keeps his head down. He still does a lot of good, but nobody notices him. Doesn't have to put up with the double edged mockery.

Gore's biggest goof is his need to say "I told you so". People just HAVE to put an ice-pick through the ego that makes him able to put himself at the fron t of the pack. Something I understand well. I STILL find Al Gore to be off-putting, but I have to admit, after watching him lo all these decades...he DOES take the time to figure out what he's talking about.

What I think is weird, is when liberals criticize ExxonMobile for funding a denialist noise-machine to say there is no problem, they are accused of being anti-profit commies.

Yet, when liberals make money investing in sustainable solutions to solve the problem, they are accused of just wanting profits...like making a profit is a bad thing.

It's kind of a funny irony.

hehe - touche'