Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/11/2008 11:00:19 AM PDT by Clive
According to my esteemed colleague Rick Bell, the United Nations is making Premier Ed Stelmach grumpy.
And who can blame him?
The UN is threatening Canada and, by extension, Alberta.
The threat is they won't let us trade carbon internationally because we apparently missed a reporting deadline.
Taking crap from the UN is hard at the best of times, given it's the most monumentally corrupt and ineffective political body since the court of Louis XVI.
It elects representatives from some of the world's most vicious, totalitarian governments to its human rights council, where they issue proclamations so anti-Semitic Joseph Goebbels is nudging Hitler in hell and grinning.
Its oil-for-food program ensured Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic spawn never ran short of high-performance automobiles or fresh porn during the international embargo against Iraqi oil.
Former Canadian general and UN "peacekeeper" Romeo Dallaire knows a thing or two about the efficacy of that international body.
So, too, a million dead Rwandans, but we can hardly ask them about it, can we?
So when the UN starts scolding us, it's understandable Ed got his back up. It's like having Lindsay Lohan lecture you about drinking.
Carbon trading is a modern religious exercise similar to the medieval practise of selling indulgences. You a bad guy? Worried about the sins you commit but are unwilling to stop committing them? After all, sin is fun.
Simple. Purchase permission to sin. Buy an indulgence from your friendly, neighbourhood priest, which gives you a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Card.
Carbon trading is the same thing. We pay somebody -- a nation or say, Al Gore's company -- money and they give us permission to drive our SUV or fly to the Amazon as an eco-tourist.
The UN's involved? Trust me. Somebody's gonna get real rich and they're going to laugh at us all the way to the bank -- which is either in Geneva or the Cayman Islands -- and the natural environment won't see anything in the way of improvement.
Ed is probably grumpy, as I am, because he realizes he's on the losing side of this one.
A poll released last week indicates a carbon tax is now supported by 65% of Albertans. Now, such a tax is supposed to be revenue neutral, as Sun Media columnist Michael Den Tandt argued in these pages last week.
The promise is that "good people" -- those with small carbon footprints or, as I like to think of them, "the poor" -- will get tax breaks and "bad people" -- the middle class -- will be punished.
But government won't collect an extra nickel.
Believe that and no doubt you also believe in the Tooth Fairy, that deep inside Paris Hilton there's a simple, decent farm girl just waiting to come out, and the altruism of Al Gore.
Before I get blasted as an evil polluter again, as many of the threatening, profanity-laced, poorly spelled e-mails I get from enviro-whackos suggest, let me note that I have a smaller carbon footprint -- even though I don't care -- than most. My home is modest. Very modest. I shop at the Double-V Boutique.
Because I am a cheapskate, middle-aged dad, I can hear a thermostat being turned up from its normal 65F from half a mile away, and every time a kid leaves the door ajar, my bellow can be heard around the cul de sac: "Close the @#%%$&! door! We're not heating Canada!"
Because I am a grouchy, middle-aged dad, I use my vehicle to drive to work, and the rest of the time I'm hiding from human interaction in the back yard or the basement.
Add the fact I used to pick up pocket money planting trees for the Ontario government when I was a kid -- there are roughly 120,000 trees I put into the ground personally nearing their 30th birthdays -- and I also win big in the carbon offset sweepstakes.
Even though I continue to think of greenhouse gases, largely water and carbon dioxide, not as pollution but by their traditional name.
Plant food.
But as rationalists and heretics discovered, back when buying indulgences in medieval times was all the rage, as the Grand Inquisitor bent to set fire to the tinder heaped around the heretic's stake, sometimes it's not about being right.
No wonder Ed's sounding grumpy.
Sixty-five percent! In Alberta. Dear Lord.
Avant Gored!
Or... we can attach a French sounding Impressionist Era name like:
Pisscanteau
-
Nice article, but 65 degrees is a bit too cool.
My favourite indulgence story is the 16th century german monk who was the Pope’s agent for raising revenue by selling indulgences. He sold some indulgences to a German Duke for past sins. The Duke then asked him if he could purchase indulgences for sins not yet committed. “of course”, replied the monk, whereupon the Duke killed the monk.
“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
— advertising jingle of Johann Tetzel, German Dominican Preacher and retail seller of indulgences (1465 – 1519).
Tetzel even went as far as creating a chart that listed a price for each type of sin and claiming that the indulgences he sold could save a soul who violated the Virgin Mary.
In 1517, Tetzel was trying to raise money for the ongoing construction of St. Peter’s Basilica and it is believed that Martin Luther was inspired to write his Ninety-Five Theses, in part, due to Tetzel’s actions during this period of time.
Goremons! Now THAT is funny!
Not a particularly good example. He was actually a hard-working, honest and well-intentioned king.
Louis XV would make a much more accurate point.
I keep my air-conditioners temp set on 60 - only because that's as low as it will go.
Gore: "Let me tell you Whhhhhat Ameerica. You give me your money-stuffs and I'll quit heatin' the earth by openin' my whale-face. THAT is what it means to be a Commu--ahem--American!"
Uhhh,
Why do you have an air conditioner?
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"Its oil-for-food program ensured Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic spawn never ran short of high-performance automobiles or fresh porn during the international embargo against Iraqi oil."
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