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I suppose you could also argue that the ideas behind the carbon offset are pretty sophisticated and they could be over the head of the average Joe. After all, one in five American adults think the sun revolves around the Earth. Fewer than 1/3 can identify DNA as key to heredity. Only about 10% know what radiation is. The average Joe lacks a lot of the background knowledge that's needed to really evaluate an idea like carbon offsets.
Do you have link for these statistics. They seem so unbelievable, but I fear they might actually be true...
Thanks.
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RE: Apples and oranges
The odd thing is that I had to hear the details of this plan from you. I just recently watched Gore's movie, but there was no indication of this sort of way forward. Really, the only thing I got from the film was: Global warming is a problem that needs to be fixed. Perhaps he's shooting a sequel to propose his remedy?
The movie was released in January of 2006. It's basically a documentary of Gore's efforts on behalf of the global warming issue during the time they were filming, which at a bit of a wild guess was probably something like mid-2004 through mid-2005. At that time, the entire focus of the debate was on whether global warming was even a problem. So it's not surprising that's the focus of the movie.
Since that time, the discussion has shifted - there's an emerging consensus that global warming really is a problem and we're now really starting to talk about solutions.
Just yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that takes the Bush administration to task - particularly the EPA - for political maneuvering at the expense of the environment, particularly global warming.
The carbon offsets have been in Gore's message for a while - that's why he buys them. That's why he refers to them in response to these accusations of hypocrisy. But nobody seems to want to look to see what they're really all about. We just keep saying "look at the hypocrite with the big gassy house."
I suppose you could also argue that the ideas behind the carbon offset are pretty sophisticated and they could be over the head of the average Joe. After all, one in five American adults think the sun revolves around the Earth. Fewer than 1/3 can identify DNA as key to heredity. Only about 10% know what radiation is. The average Joe lacks a lot of the background knowledge that's needed to really evaluate an idea like carbon offsets.
That kind of leaves it to us nerds, though. Instead of playing into false arguments like "Gore is a hypocrite", we need to really understand what these people are really on about and help the less nerdy figure it out.
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