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The Forum > Article Comments > The Green religion > Comments

The Green religion : Comments

By William York, published 26/3/2008

Papal indulgences, carbon indulgences: it's all about having a clear conscience.

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Carbon offsets for the most part are a lame copout which largely have little or no effect and in some cases actually excuse increases in emissions. Advocates include Al Gore, Prof. Garnaut (re PNG forests), the nation of Norway and no doubt some of our frequent flying cabinet ministers.

The first type of offset is carbon sinks such as tree planting; it claims to rapidly and permanently absorb large amounts of CO2. It generally costs about 10% of what it would take to cut back emissions in the first place. The second type is clean development which claims to prevent emissions for which there is a presumed entitlement. Both kinds of offsets expose all kinds of fraud, exaggeration, time shifting, double counting, undercosting and lack of verification. Examples; the World Bank paid Chinese CFC manufacturers $US550m to change their formula but the actual cost was more like $40m if I recall. The Toronto Bluejays baseball team claim nuclear energy offsets their travel emissions.

Guilt and political expedience are powerful forces. There are plenty of good reasons to plant trees so might as well get in a little rural pork barrelling at the same time. If we buy coloured beads for a sustainable basket weaving community in the mountains of Peru that surely balances hot gas spewing from a Latrobe valley power station. Politically offsets are a winner so expect them to continue.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 9:36:02 AM
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There is nothing funny or humorous in this essay.

It is just another example of dim-witted "right" wing "thinking".

Meanwhile the religion that does govern our "culture" is the "religion" of never ending CONSUMERISM. Summed up in the t-shirt slogans "Its All About Me" or "I Shop Therefore I Am".

This brand-name obsessed "person" was even celebrated as the "person" of the year by Time Magazine two years ago.

The word consume means to destroy. And that is exactly what the never ending world wide "religion" of its all-about-me consumerism is doing to the planet.

And no amount of sophistries from Lomborg can hide the fact.
Posted by Ho Hum, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 9:36:40 AM
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Ho Hum I agree with your much better analogy of CONSUMERISM as a religion than the author's 'Green Religion'.

Unlike Religion, there is much evidence that we are damaging our environment and over-using resources so the parallel with Religion is unwarranted and only detracts from the validity of the author's argument.

After getting that off my chest I have to say I agree with the author in essence about carbon offsets. All you are doing is shifting responsibility away from the emitters and it does nothing to reduce harmful emissions. What is the point of an offset if the pollution is still occuring? It also means an emitter can now pay a fee to a tree planter even if the trees have been there for the past fifty years. There is a great risk that environmentalism will become a commodity to be dubiously exploited without any real impact where it is needed.

It is distorted logic and does nothing to reduce emissions or encourage innovative energy alernatives nor will it reduce consumption. Carbon offsets are the easy way out to avoid the real and electorally unpopular issue that we need to reduce our lifestyles to reduce our impact.
Posted by pelican, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 2:02:25 PM
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In passing, I visited St Peter's last year. It struck me as a monument to ego, power and excess, having no connection whatsoever with Jesus or his teachings. It was about aggrandisement rather than humility, directing resources to the vanity of the popes and their acolytes rather than to helping the spiritual development of allcomers.

Yes, I see parallels.
Posted by Faustino, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 7:50:38 PM
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There is one important difference between the Church of pre-Reformation and the Green "church". It didn't matter one bit for the global climate, or humanity outside Europe, as to whether it was Tetzel or Luther who was right. However, if anthropogenic warming is the correct interpretation, then if it contiunes it is indeed the end of civilization as we enjoy it now. And it is only a fool that does not look for alternatives for energy production and does not seek to reduce CO2 output, even if just from the precautionary principle.

However, I don't believe carbon offsets will work, and airlines which claim their aircraft are carbon-neutral are nothing but liars.
Posted by HenryVIII, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 8:04:53 PM
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This article is quite sad: superficial, ahistorical and just plain silly. Hopefully the author will find a cure for his insecurities.
Posted by Gazza2121, Thursday, 27 March 2008 1:06:13 AM
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Unregulated commerce tries to make a buck out of climate chaos and somehow thats the very uncommercial Greenies fault? Sounds like just another RightThinker ducking responsibility, eg. Alex "they're good wars, really" Downer, John "you've never had it so good" Howard..

Carbon offsets are the con that big business invented so it can make money out of pretending to give a damn. Blaming greenies for offsets is like blaming Jews for the holocaust, read The Australian for the synthesis.
Posted by Liam, Thursday, 27 March 2008 7:17:37 AM
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A particularly poor article that stretches a lame analogy beyond breaking point. It's quite pathetic when the earth-rapists try to cast the worldwide environmental movement as a 'religion'. If environmentalism is a religion, then so is capitalism, liberalism, feminism etc.

In other words, the article's central point is meaningless. OLO can do better than this.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Thursday, 27 March 2008 8:10:33 AM
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CJ Morgan

Entirely concur with your post, what with this article and the serial contributions by industry apologiser, Marohasy, one wonders just how 'fair and balanced' OLO truly is. I'm sure that Graham Young could produce numbers to prove otherwise. However, I doubt he could balance out the number of articles published by Marohasy with say, Tim Flannery.

As for Carbon Trading; apart moving money from one bucket to another what is it actually DOING?

When are we going to see industry actually act - all we hear are words about dollars but nothing about value, just a load of, er, pontification.
Posted by Fractelle, Thursday, 27 March 2008 9:56:04 AM
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Fractelle,
I edit OLO and am responsible for the balance of articles on this site. As we publish six op-eds each and every weekday that is quite a bit of material to obtain. I endeavour to keep the journal as balanced as possible and I invite contributions from authors with all different points of view. I rely on authors' goodwill to supply me with material, which they do free and gratis, and for that I am very much obliged. Just sometimes it proves difficult to get the opposing view immediately, but in the end I think you will find we manage to balance our articles reasonably well.
Susan Prior - editor
Posted by SusanP, Thursday, 27 March 2008 1:11:17 PM
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SusanP

So I guess we can expect an article from Tim Flannery real soon?

:-)
Posted by Fractelle, Thursday, 27 March 2008 3:14:32 PM
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I like the comparison between Luther and Lomborg. Luther still believed in God, but rejected the church. Lomborg does believe in man-made global warming but rejects the green establishment's response to it.

You neglected another comparison. Christians light votive candles as an offering to God. Climate change fanatics insert a flourescent light globe.
Posted by grn, Thursday, 27 March 2008 3:19:37 PM
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Now he can be rather elusive! If you can persuade him to submit something to us I would be delighted to publish. But how does David Suzuki sound? Watch this space next week ...
Susan
Posted by SusanP, Thursday, 27 March 2008 3:50:57 PM
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Were carbon offsets devised by green zealots? I think neither environmental zealots nor scientists are impressed by this mechanism. It has been, rather, developed by lovers of market mechanisms who have an unholy belief that paper shuffling can work miracles. To infer that these modern "indulgences" spring from the science of AGW misses the mark: "indulgences" sprang from the belief that money can buy anything and carbon offsets also clearly derive from this same belief.

I suppose the author does not want us to push his analogies too far. If the dogmas of Luther and protestantism gave rise to fundamentalist, right-wing reactionary christianity of the modern day, where will the followers of Lomberg lead us?
Posted by skeptical of skeptics, Thursday, 27 March 2008 5:20:11 PM
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I think there is an important point to be made here, and this is coming from the point of view of someone who deeply identifies with conservationism, not a growth-obsessed right-winger.

Buying green lifestyle products is about as effective in solving the environmental problem as praying to one's god/s, and really it just helps the common person to resolve their guilt and anxiety about what's to come so they can get back to work and watching Friends. Essentially, we're deluded in thinking that we can continue to live the all-consuming lifestyles we do and not have a negative impact on the environment.

There are two elements to human-caused environmental damage: the amount of people, and the impact each individual has. At a global population of about 6.8 billion, we will either need to reduce our individual impact (i.e., our industrial, consumer lifestyles) drastically, or make efforts to reduce the population worldwide significantly.
Posted by K., Thursday, 27 March 2008 6:04:45 PM
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SusanP

While I have to concede that one David Suzuki does equal about 20 Jennifer Marohasys, I could still happily do without such proliferation from her; seeing her name on so many OLO articles certainly does give the appearance of bias.

Nonetheless, OLO do manage to provide some interesting articles and would be totally boring without such contributions. For example, I did some background checking on Marohasy, which I probably wouldn't have bothered to do had she received less attention on your website. Best to know exactly what you're dealing with.

Regards
Posted by Fractelle, Friday, 28 March 2008 11:00:49 AM
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Fractelle “I could still happily do without such proliferation from her; seeing her name on so many OLO articles certainly does give the appearance of bias.”

Check the article lists..

The incidence of Jennifer’s articles in the past year has been about one per quarter, that on a basis of say 350-400 articles a quarter.

I think you are being a little oversensitive toward posts which might “challenge” your own personal bias and possibly your reasoning skills.

I do recall OLO answered a comment I made some time ago regarding the absence of Andrew Bolte, advising (if I recall correctly) that he charged for reproduction of his words.

Where as the offerings of say, Tristan Ewings are available and posted indiscriminately on any debate forum which does not ban him for flooding.

Maybe that shows a difference in quality, Andrew Bolte charges for what Tristan Ewings finds difficulty giving away.

Then, such is the quality of the rightwing view versus the leftwing. Noting Marx could not give his ideas away either.

K “At a global population of about 6.8 billion, we will either need to reduce our individual impact (i.e., our industrial, consumer lifestyles) drastically, or make efforts to reduce the population worldwide significantly.”

I agree. My personal option is the deal with the numbers of people and leave a reduced quantity to aspire to a better life than a larger number suffering privation. In that regard, the onus should be on the underdeveloped countries who are the source of burgeoning population growth.
Posted by Col Rouge, Friday, 28 March 2008 12:05:10 PM
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Col Rouge, if you mean the Herald Suns Andrew Bolt (known elsewhere as 'the Dolt in the Hun'), i think he needs the power to edit comments - he certainly does on his own website, where critics rarely get their posts published. If he's happy in his News Corp playpen i'm happy for him to stay there, we're not short of similar fools.
Posted by Liam, Friday, 28 March 2008 5:13:48 PM
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Oh dear. The usual rabble of comments.

No respondent seems concerned that no scientific paper ever published has shown a variation in global climate that was irrefutably caused by human activity.

Never mind the evidence, feel the emotion .. or should I say the chant of the religious.
Posted by Snowman, Sunday, 6 April 2008 4:13:32 PM
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