The Fortress of Solitude will melt

[caddyman]

It’s not an original point, I forget who made it, but it was some prominent meeja person (the Paxman, perhaps?) – but there really is something wonderfully mediaeval about carbon off-sets. It truly is a concept that a 14th century pope looking to redecorate the Vatican could get behind. For those as don’t know, the idea, boiled down to its basics is that if you are a corporation and you want to continue burning oil by the barrel load to roast seal pups and that sort of thing, you don’t have to worry because you can buy an indulgence a carbon off-set that effectively reduces your carbon emissions by fiat. This off-set is then taken up by a bunch of monks who will pray for your soul another company that will then reduce their out put so you don’t have to.

This is a system that ran for centuries in the mediaeval Catholic Church until Luther suddenly realised that it was a corrupt practice and nailed 95 pieces of kryptonite to a church door, defending himself later by stating, “I had a dream!”¹

The point is, this all led to the Protestant Reformation.

I got on to this because I have dozed off several times this afternoon reading a draft paper dealing with carbon off-sets for local authorities, particularly in relation to their provision of housing (see, like all good doctrine, it gets everywhere) and this led me to wondering where and when we could expect the Carbon Reformation presumably headed by a group calling themselves the Disciples of Gore or something similar.

I’m tired – this started off in one place and ended up somewhere else entirely. Time to go home.


¹This may not be entirely accurate, but I do know that he did reasonably well, finally earning a Piece of Westphalia

Comments

[captainweasel.livejournal.com]

This just proves that as soon as you put limits on something business doesn't try and get UNDER the limit, it tries to push everything RIGHT UP TO the limit... and then turns what should be limiting them into a monetarised commodity to be traded.
Personally I'd want to ban carbon trading to anyone except an approved central authority - and they only BUY unused carbon credits, so you can profit from producing less carbon, but you can't trade it to cover others shortfalls.

and wasn't "Disciplines of Gore" a book by John Norman?

[bitofstuff.livejournal.com]

I've had this thought before. There is a carbon purgatory, but you can avoid it if you pay enough money to the priests of carbon. It's a disgustingly cynical idea that just avoids the issue - typically offensive. Ah, I feel the urge to say something about the "word and not the spirit of the law"... I should stop now :)