Carbon Capers

R. E. Smith Jr.

There’s an admonition about putting the brain in gear before engaging the mouth—or something like that. Ample evidence that some people’s minds seem to be in neutral while they engage their environmental guilt came out in two recent press articles reporting news of the “carbon-neutral” scam.

Alan Zarembo writes in the Los Angeles Times about the remorseful who buy carbon “offsets” to ease their polluter guilt. That’s all there is to it because no other benefits accrue except to some who happily take the supposed wrongdoer’s money—and ours.

The entrepreneurial spirit is a wondrous thing and, of course, no harm occurs if all parties to a deal are satisfied. But two things define carbon offsets as a fraud: implied, but nonexistent tangible benefits, and public funds usurped to support some at the expense of others.

Now get this scenario: Liberal Galena Gotrocks of Beverly Hills, California has someone estimate that her rich-and-famous lifestyle emits 20 tons of carbon dioxide each year. She hires a middleman from Freakout Energy, Inc. and gives him $12 per ton (($240) to help pay for two windmills located in an Eskimo village near Point Barrow, Alaska. “Like, it makes me feel better about flying my jet to New York,” says Galena.

Freakout, Inc. and other contributors can cover only a fraction of the high cost of the windmill project. So, how do they recover costs and profit? You probably guessed it. Our taxes are blowing in the wind. Here’s how it works.

Alaska Congressman Ernest Earmarks suggests that Freakout apply for an alternative energy grant from the Department of Commerce. The federal grant covers $750,000 of the $1 million project. The Alaska Department of Frozen Assets offers a state grant for $250,000. The Eskimos who operate the windmill project use the energy to run refrigerators in their igloos and Freakout sells the rest to a local utility for long-term profits. Galena flies her jet guilt free.

You are probably thinking what a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, Connie Van Gilder, said about a subsidized methane producing project on her farm to contain greenhouse gases escaping from 400 Holstein cows: “We still don’t understand it all. Its hard for us to fathom, to see what it is doing.” Me, too, Connie. Van Gilders got $631,000 from state and federal grants to help pay for the $750,000 project they would have financed without public funding. Their contract with Native Energy, a carbon dioxide offset company, for 29,000 tons of guilt was about $2.40 per ton; giving them a tidy “bonus.”

I didn’t make this one up. These scams are springing up all over the U. S. of A.

Here in North Carolina, N.C. GreenPower a Raleigh nonprofit, struggles to compete with other states in these feel-good ventures. It receives $4 a month—enough to burn a 100-watt light bulb for one hour with “renewable” powered electricity—from thousands of contributing dupes through their fossil-fuel utility bills. Unfortunately, our state legislators recently laid their guilt on the rest of us by law. North Carolinians now must pay up to $34 a year extra, tacked on to each electric utility bill, to subsidize state-sponsored renewable energy and efficiency projects.

Even some environmentalists have more sense than to support energy production through N.C. GreenPower. Elizabeth Ouzts, state director of Environment North Carolina observed that, for those who “want to go above and beyond,” home improvements and buying energy efficient appliances would have a greater impact, according to an article by John Murawski, staff writer for the Raleigh News & Observer.

When energy costs increase through market-driven supply and demand economic laws, people will conserve without government intervention. Unfortunately, and increasingly, our feckless political representatives hinder our individual best interests and freedom of choice by legislating schemes that favor the interests of a few at the expense of the rest of us.

Mr. Zarembo, in his L. A. Times article, sums up the carbon-neutral scam: These “ridiculously good” deals don’t lead to any “additional emissions reductions,” he writes. “Beneath the feel-good simplicity of buying your way to carbon neutrality is a growing concern that the idea is more hype than solution.”

Thank you, Mr. Zarembo and Mr. Murawski. It’s encouraging to know that some journalists will expose an environmental hoax perpetrated on us by irresponsible politicians in collusion with environmental groups that pursue socialist agenda. Sadly, it’s not enough to protect us from these public predators.