Carbon Offsets: Al Gore’s Big Easy

Gore’s carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla’s, but he eases his conscience with ‘carbon offsets.’ He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.

Whoda thunk it? Former oilman George Bush, scourge of the environment, lives in a house more eco-friendly than Al Gore, a dwelling that would make Hollywood eco-activist Ed Begley, star of HGTV’s ‘Living With Ed,’ drool.
When Dubya spends time at his Crawford ranch, he’s in a single-story, 4,000-square-foot limestone house that a 2001 article in USA Today described as an ‘eco-friendly haven.’ Even David Roberts, staff writer for the online environmental magazine Grist has called the energy efficiency of the president’s home as ‘fantastic.’

As USA Today described it: ‘Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is called ‘gray water,’ and one tank for ‘black water’ from the kitchen and toilets.’ The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater.

In addition, ‘the Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems use.’ As Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted: ‘It’s interesting that Bush seems to actually practice conservation, while Gore seems to want to buy his way out of his obligations.’

Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore’s growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.

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