Al Gore is just another product. Except this product insists that it be exempt from competition or critical evaluation.

From Holman Jenkins at the WSJ:

But from our first column on this subject, we have been convinced that the scientific questions are interesting and irrelevant, since it was never in the cards that Western societies (or Brazil or India or China) would sacrifice economic growth for the uncertain benefits of fighting climate change. Unable to do anything meaningful about climate change, policy would therefore default to satisfying the demand of organized interests for climate pork.

Isn’t that, however much he may be distracted by feelings of sincerity, exactly the economic function of Mr. Gore today?

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This is really not a “gotcha” moment by any means. Al Gore can just go out and buy methane credits (which I believe do exist). He’ll never stop eating beef, chicken, ManBearPig, etc.

Exorbitantly wealthy liberal elites never have to behave according to the principles they express publicly– there’s always a company (which probably counts Al Gore among its owners) from whom they can purchase absolution. This is a secular religion, and credits/offsets are the indulgences.

Carbon-neutral styling.

From a fawning, self-contradicting article in the New York Times (emphasis added):

Mr. Gore is not a lobbyist, and he has never asked Congress or the administration for an earmark or policy decision that would directly benefit one of his investments. But he has been a tireless advocate for policies that would move the country away from the use of coal and oil, and he has begun a $300 million campaign to end the use of fossil fuels in electricity production in 10 years.

But Marc Morano, a climate change skeptic who until recently was a top aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said that what he saw as Mr. Gore’s alarmism and occasional exaggerations distorted the debate and also served his personal financial interests.

Mr. Gore has testified numerous times in support of legislation to address climate change and to revamp the nation’s energy policies.

He appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April to support an energy and climate change bill that was intended to reduce global warming emissions through a cap-and-trade program for major polluting industries.

Umm… really? Here are a couple facts that are– what’s the word– oh yeah, inconvenient:

1. One of Al Gore’s companies, Generation Investment Management, purchased a 9.5 percent stake in Camco International Ltd, a “carbon asset developer” (whatever the hell that is– maybe Jeffrey Skilling knows). Camco has “one of the world’s largest carbon credit portfolios” and coordinates the sale and delivery of carbon credits. I guess Camco will completely sit out the pending “cap-and-trade” legislation, in order to preserve Gore’s putative independence?
2. Just browse the “Greentech” portfolio companies at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins (of which Al Gore is a partner). Solar technology, fuel cells, energy management solutions, geothermal energy… None of these firms would benefit directly from new legislation mandating a reduction in carbon emissions?

Listen, I’ve got no problem with Al Gore getting stinking filthy rich on his ideas for Hope-powered zeppelins and magical-fantastical windmills. But can we stop pretending like this guy is a selfless saint?

I'm thuper cereal-- these ThuperFreakonomic solutions are too easy on humans!

But perhaps [SuperFreakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's] biggest sin, which is also the central point of the chapter, is pointing out that seemingly insurmountable problems often have cheap and simple solutions. Hence world hunger was largely conquered not by a massive effort at population control, but by the development of new and sturdier strains of wheat and rice. Hence infection and mortality rates in hospitals declined dramatically as doctors began to appreciate the need to wash their hands.

We don't have enough refrigerated lockboxes for our polar bears.

With cold weather across the country setting new records for low temperatures and early snowfall, believers in human-caused global warming are the object of increased criticism that their ideas constitute patently false pseudo-science.

In an effort to refute these claims, the de facto leader of the movement– Vice President Al Gore– has adopted a bold new strategy for changing minds about global warming. Gore claims to have jettisoned traditional science in favor of the poorly-understood, avant-garde critical theory of postmodernism:

The advantage that postmodernism has is that almost nobody knows what that word means, let alone what ideas it encompasses. I think it has something to do with rejecting conventional narratives or worldviews, or something.

So now that the climate isn’t cooperating with our vision of the future, it only makes sense to reject the very notion that climate is a knowable, measurable thing. It is, after all, just part of a patriarchal, heterocentric, constructed reality. Or something.

Jesus Christ. These new green jobs suck.

It is undeniable that the contemplated carbon tax/”cap-and-trade” legislation will create jobs. But the question should not be whether it will create jobs, but rather what kinds of jobs? How many? And, at what cost?

Here is Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, describing how the legislation could be a jobs windfall for her home state:

Moving forward with the climate bill, Boxer said, would “allow this economy to take off, because it would draw, not federal funds, but private funds.”

She said that venture capitalists in her home state of California have told her that the bill would signal a good time to invest in green technologies, which Boxer said she hoped would create jobs.

If the government makes it inordinately expense or difficult, or both, to do business, it is likely that entrepeneurs and investors will divert resources to emergent industries that solve (or circumvent) those challenges. At least as long as we practice some semblance of capitalism, that’s what will happen. And it will clearly create some jobs. But something else will happen, too– dirty, boring industrial jobs that Barbara Boxer and Kleiner Perkins don’t have any interest in may evaporate or move to China or India forever.

I can’t help wondering what other legislation might create new, sexy, “green collar jobs,” whatever the hell that means:

• Grounded-for-Good. It is illegal to fly on an airplane unless you are a Congressperson, or one of the 25 amazing American patriots that each Congressperson is allowed to pick. Source of new jobs: solar-powered zeppelins, hang-gliding insurance, graft
• No-More-Guzzlers. The internal combustion engine is illegal. It is also illegal to talk disparagingly about the imminent Fisker Automotive IPO, or billionaires from Tennessee. Source of new jobs: Self-congratulatory Tesla and Fisker merchandise
• Alpacas-All-The-Time. It is discovered that the alpaca has a substantially smaller carbon footprint than cows, pigs and other livestock animals– which are all, naturally, now illegal. Source of new jobs: Alpaca psychics, one-way zeppelin flights out of the USA

That's super!

Al Gore must be tired of his proletariat hybrid cars.  He needs something fancier, something that proudly announces to the world:  I am an unstoppable douchebag!  Enter the “Karma”, $90,000 luxury green car for the truly discerning eco-elitist.

Fortunately for the Oscar-winning Nobel laureate, connections with the government will get you a big heap of taxpayer money to fund whatever industrial lark you can dream up.  This comes in the form of a $528.7 million dollar loan to Fisker Automotive, a luxury green carmaker funded in part by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, a firm at which Al Gore is a parter.  Isn’t government money handy when you want to make huge, risky equity investments?

From the Inconvenient Truth website:

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged:

Capitalists with government help…the worst of all economic phenomenon.