The Carbon Credit Scam

Did you miss your opportunity to help the Prince of Nigeria transfer his millions of dollars in frozen assets to safety? Well, don't worry, Al Gore has given you another chance to be duped! Thanks to the miracle of carbon credits, even nobodies like you and I can help the Prince of America save the planet from global warming.

Here's how the scheme works: if you're an obscenely wealthy, planet-raping oppresser of the little people (like Prince of America, Al Gore), you can ride around in the luxury of private jets all day long -- belching out more pollutants in a single day than the average American produces in a lifetime -- and not only assuage your own guilty conscience, but also bamboozle the simple-minded into believing that you're actually "acting green" ... just by buying carbon credits! But wait, it gets even better. By paying a few extra dollars to erase your "carbon footprint" you can cast aspersions at anyone who isn't rich enough to do the same, thereby shaming them into using less fossil-fuels so there will be more for you and your fat-cat Hollywood friends!

You see, a carbon credit is nothing more than paying a fee to someone who owns a tree in return for credit for the amount of carbon dioxide that tree removes from the atmosphere. Oh sure, that tree was there anyway, and it was going to process that carbon dioxide anyway, and they're not going to plant a single additional tree just because some rich polluter pays them an arbitrary fee for the credit. But actually cleaning the air isn't the point. The point is to feel good about yourself -- smug, self-righteous, and condescending toward anyone who doesn't buy carbon credits -- and to be environmentally holier-than-thou toward ordinary people.

And it gets even better. Since they don't use the money from carbon credits to actually clean one cubic inch of air or to plant more trees, there is a limited supply of carbon credits available in the world. Once the elitists like Al Gore have bought them all up, they will be able to justify legislating away the rights of ordinary people to use fossil-fuels in the name of environmental preservation. Oh, happy day for the planet! Then only the wealthy elite -- who are, because of their wealth and privilege, obviously wiser and more deserving than all the rest of us, anyway -- will be able to play on their private jets and yachts and vast estates to their hearts' content without any fear that mere undeserving peasants like us might emit even a speck of greenhouse gas trying not to freeze to death in the winter. No, they will keep us firmly crushed under the iron heels of their jackboots where we belong!

Heil, Gore, savior of the planet! Sieg, heil!

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