This Blog is NOT Carbon Neutral

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.  I celebrated by burning fossil fuels on the Beltway for about 3.5 hours during my commute to and from the office today.  Normally I only spend about 2 hours on the Beltway, but today was special.  This evening, I plan to celebrate a little more by promising to Save Water and Drink Wine instead.

Let me get more to the point of the title of this blog post. Over the weekend, I was visiting several other blogs in the blogging networks that I belong to.  I came across at least a dozen blogs that proudly proclaimed that their blog was carbon neutral.   Each of them also had a button similar to this one:

Essentially, the button leads to a website that promises to plant a tree if you register your blog with them.  The planting of the tree is supposed to offset carbon emissions of your blog.  I considered registering for a moment or two, but only because I like the idea of planting trees.  I like trees.  However, I decided against it because I find the whole idea of carbon offsets to be a bit suspicious at best and reprehensible at worst.

The idea of buying carbon offsets to compensate for your carbon footprint has been compared to the old Catholic Church practice of selling indulgences for the forgiveness of sins.  Al "I invented the internet" Gore emits a hell of a lot of carbon, but proudly proclaims that he purchases offsets to neutralize those emissions.  What he doesn't tell us is that he purchases them from a company that he helped found.

Instead, I kind of like the program that I read about in the Daily Caller today.  They have launched the Daily Caller Offset-Offset program.  For a small donation, they will help you to offset the offsets purchased by your liberal environmentalist friend. For example, if they buy an offset to neutralize their carbon, the Daily Caller will start a tire fire to offset that offset.  To close out this Earth Day post, here is the late great George Carlin expressing his views on the environmentalists and their desire to "Save the Planet."

Vegetarian Diet More Harmful to Environment than Meat Eating

Image via Wikipedia

Environmental and vegetarian activists have been touting the virtues of a vegetarian diet as a means of helping combat climate change. They argue that raising livestock such as cattle and sheep leads to an increase in greenhouse gasses due to their belching and farting. The British government has even gone so far as to create recommended menus to eliminate high carbon foods like lamb and beef.

Now, a new study conducted by Cranfield University has concluded that switching to a vegetarian diet could actually be more harmful to the environment than a meat eating diet. You might think that the study was commissioned by the cattle and sheep farming industry, but you would be mistaken. It was actually commissioned by the environmental group the World Wildlife Fund.

The study concludes that if people switched from a meat and dairy diet to a vegetarian diet, that more farmland would be needed to supply the United Kingdom with all of their needs. This could potentially lead to further deforestation of the planet to provide that land. In addition, soy based protein substitutes often require a lot of processing and therefore more energy is expended.

I am sure that environmental groups and PETA will continue to push their far left agenda. We will continue to hear how livestock production is harming the environment. To be fair, it would probably benefit us all to occasionally have vegetarian days in our diets. As for me, I think I will have a steak, and I don't think I will feel guilty about it harming the environment.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cutting Britain's livestock industry won't save the planet (guardian.co.uk)
• Becoming vegetarian 'can harm the environment' (telegraph.co.uk)

Got Milk?

Image via Wikipedia

Back in May, I found an interesting article about how governement advisors in Britain were developing menus to cut out so called "high carbon" foods like lamb or beef. I cited it as another example of how insane the whole global warming cultists have become. The reality is that it is really more about controlling out lifestyles than anything else.

In another example of the insanity of the climate change cult, Tesco, one of the largest supermarket chains in Britain has decided to label some 500 items with the "carbon footprint" of those items. Their goal is to help customers make "green" purchasing decisions.

The first item that will receive carbon footprint labeling is milk, one of their best selling items. The largest impact on greenhouse gasses in the production of milk comes during the agricultural phase of production, primarily from the methane emissions from the cows. The labels will only appear on regular milk products and not organic milk. Apparently, the cows that are used for organic milk do not fart quite as much as regular dairy cows.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Study: Ancient farmers started global warming (cnn.com)
• Climate sceptics and believers unite (guardian.co.uk)
• What's the environmental impact of milk? (guardian.co.uk)
• Tesco to put 'carbon labels' on milk (guardian.co.uk)

An Email From My Congressman

Prior to the House of Representatives voting on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, I emailed my Congressman, Steny Hoyer, to express my views of the bill and to encourage him to vote against it. As I expected, my effort was in vain since Congressman Hoyer is the House majority leader. I knew there would be no chance in hell of him going against the party line.

I had emailed the Congressman a few days before the vote on the bill which took place on June 26th. It took his office (I am sure Congressman Hoyer did not write the email that I have included in this post) a month to reply. Needless to say, the response is nothing more than Democrat talking points on the benefits of the legislation. Since the bill still has to get through the Senate, I will be sending emails to Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin. I do not expect any different result as both are Democrats.

The email from Hoyer's office states that I should not reply to the email as it is from an outgoing only email address that can not accept replies. If I could reply, I would point out to Congressman Hoyer that inspite of Al Gore's insistence, the science is not settled on global warming. There are multiple studies to suggest otherwise. On top of that, Europe has had cap and trade since the passage of the Kyoto Protocol and have actually seen their CO2 emissions increase. Though I doubt that those arguments would do anything to bring Hoyer over from the dark side.

July 27, 2009 Dear Mr. , Thank you for contacting me to express your opinion regarding provisions aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions in H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. I appreciate your taking the time to share your views on this important matter. H.R. 2454 is a comprehensive energy bill. It contains provisions to promote renewable sources of energy, carbon capture and sequestration technologies, clean electric vehicles, as well as smart grid and electricity transmission. Additionally, it would increase energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, protect U.S. consumers and industry utilities, promote green jobs, and implement an emissions cap to address greenhouse gas pollution. H.R. 2454 was introduced by Representative Henry Waxman on May 15, 2009, and passed the full House of Representatives with my support on June 26, 2009 by a vote of 219 to 212. It now awaits action by the Senate. H.R. 2454 would establish a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The program would limit greenhouse gas emissions nationwide beginning in 2012 to 97% of 2005 levels (3% reduction), and emissions would decline to 83% of 2005 levels (17% reduction) by 2020 and 17% of 2005 levels (83% reduction) by 2050. H.R. 2454 would give utilities and businesses that emit carbon dioxide three ways to comply: 1) hold an allowance, or right to emit, for each ton of carbon dioxide; 2) buy one of the 2 billion tons per year allowed under the program of carbon sequestered by U.S. forests or agricultural practices, or international forestry (known as an offset) in lieu of reducing their emissions; or 3) reduce their emissions. The trading system would allow utilities or businesses that innovate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to sell their excess right to emit to other businesses that need them to comply. At the beginning, H.R. 2454 would distribute the majority of allowances to utilities and businesses at no cost to support various policy objectives, including lowering energy costs for consumers, and assisting trade-vulnerable and other industries to make the transition to a clean energy economy. In addition, an increasing percentage (approximately 18% in 2016, and 70% by 2035) of the allowances would be sold through auction. The auction revenues would be used to invest in clean energy and energy efficient technologies. This bill also creates a Clean Energy Bank to fund promising energy projects across America; and it invests in high-tech transmission lines to build the essential foundation for a more efficient grid. New transmission lines, comprised of superconducting cable and other efficient wires, will carry more power within existing rights-of-way, with less land use. The result will be a more secure, environmentally-friendly grid. Global warming threatens every one of us; it will affect the kind of lives our children will lead and the kind of prosperity our country and our world will enjoy. In my view, the establishment of a cap-and-trade system would mark our nation's first serious effort to account for the cost of carbon emissions - and it would be our most important response to global warming to date. We can fight global warming with the same kind of market-based, cap-and-trade solution that was so effective at combating acid rain at minimal cost in the 1990s. While I understand the concern that cap-and-trade will not be without cost, the reality is that we are already paying the cost of carbon emissions. The longer we wait to act, the more we will pay every year. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), if we take action now, we will see job creation, growth, clean energy and energy independence for less than 50 cents per day by 2020 for the average household. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. To stay informed, please visit my website at www.hoyer.house.gov. While there, you can sign up for the Hoyer Herald, access my voting record, and get information about important public issues. If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me. With kindest regards, I am Sincerely yours, Steny H. Hoyer About Steny Hoyer | Newsroom | Issues & Legislation | 5th District | Contact Us NOTE: Please do not respond to this message, as it comes from an outgoing-only email address that cannot accept replies. If you would like to contact me via email, please do so through my website's contact page.