Bengt Washburn
Posted on November 17, 2008
“Deer Hunting” on YouTube
Blog Post That Led To “Global Warming”
(The following has been reproduced - with permission - from Bengt’s “Blaaagh” available on his web-site.)
Posted on: Friday, January 04, 2008
Its a Miracle! Carbon Offsets remove CO2 AND Guilt!
I am reposting this blog in honor of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize.
If you go to this link- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001. htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_oct19&link_position=link1
You can read an excellent article with some damning testimony about the validity of Renewable Energy Credits.
Hey Hummer owners, do you want to be disgustingly rich and “part of the solution” at the same time? Ever wondered if there was a way you could use your money to make yourself “part of the solution” without giving up materialism? GOOD NEWS! Now you can offset your embarrasingly huge carbon footprint by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits from Al Gore! Thats right, Al Gore, recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a very wealthy progressive, has made guilt free wealth affordable for people who are shamefully wealthy. Its easy!
STEP ONE: Go on-line, using the computer in one of your Hummers or one of the computers in your massive house, and track down a company that offers “Renewable Energy Credits”, or carbon offsets, preferably one with Al Gore on the consulting pay-roll.
STEP TWO: Purchase the appropriate amount of Renewable Energy Credits according to a mathematical formula that calculates how much you shit on the earth and all of its inhabitants. The Renewable Energy Credit company will take your money and pay some working class loser to go out and plant a tree, or build a wind mill, and WAH-LAH! Now you can continue to feed your voracious ego and drive your Hummer guilt free, in smug contentment. If you buy enough credits you’re hummer could actually leave a wake of carbon free air clean enough to pump into a new born babies incubator!
Of course the owners of Renewable Energy Credit companies will “skim off” just enough of the money to buy their OWN massive house and Hummer. If all of this sounds too arduous you could probably hire somebody else to buy your carbon offsets for you. Its AMAZING! What an ingenous way to remove CO2 and guilt from our atmosphere! Where did our avid greenies come up with such a great idea? From religion, or I should say from some OTHER religion.
Basically, it is the old “sale of indulgences” routine. I know, some of you are thinking: Hey, Silent G, what in the heck is “the sale of indulgences?” Well, in anticipation of your question I made up* a short history of the sale of indulgences.
Some scholars theorize that the sale of indulgences evolved out of the ancient practice of live sacrifice. For this elaborate cleansing ritual, sinners would bring the best of their flocks and crops to the local priest to be offered as a “live sacrifice” to God for the forgiveness of their sins. On the day of worship the priests would wait eagerly at the doors of their temple, mouths watering in anticipation of their weekly meal. (1)
This system, known by the priests as “the pot luck system” left room for the occasional streak of bad meals. In 749 BC, after a particularly bad stretch of flax seed meal and cat, a high priest of Rah Rah, named Karmen Ghia De A’lacarte introduced the first “price list” for sins. (2) By assigning specific items to each sin, Karmen was able to insure that every meal was a winner.
In 245BC money was invented. (1) Priests quickly converted their “sacrifice” price lists to cold hard cash and the “sale of indulgences” was born. (4)
The Catholic Church practiced the “sale of indulgences” for a couple of centuries. For parishioners it was convenient. If a man got carried away with his libido, a couple of spare ha’pennys was all he needed to be right with God.
For priests the sale of indulgences was lucrative. In a matter of months a market economy of sin developed, with priests competing for parishioners with lower prices. One record tells of a priest who tripled his attendance in one month by selling sodomy for a schilling. (1)
Soon, centrally located churches began to cash in on their prime locations, selling indulgences at inflated “convenience store” prices. Some accounts describe impoverished guilt laden sinners walking for miles to pay for sins that were too expensive at the church located next door. In the cities, the old or infirm could hardly afford to sin at all. (3)
In a suspected price fixing scandal of 1437, self abuse prices simultaneously skyrocketed all over Italy. Families with teenage boys were especially hard hit. Many people lost their homes. Remarkably, the “Masturbation Inflationary Incident of 1437″, as it became known, gave new meaning to Adam Smiths Invisible Hand theory a full 286 years before his birth in 1723. (4)
In 1492 Simon Clivebald, a blind galley cook, wanted to get laid before setting sale with Christopher Columbus. The sexually frustrated sailor “put down” 5 pence for the act of fornication, normally a 40 pence sin. Simon agreed to pay the remaining 35 pence over time or suffer the penalty of death by mud. The priest took the first “down payment” in history and instructed the blind cook to “lay-away”. The sale of indulgences spawned many of the complicated pricing schemes that are still used today in the car and mattress industries. Bait and switch or the old “What do I have to do to get you into an adultery today?” approach were all developed during the sale of indulgences. (3)
The Catholic Church has long since abandoned the practice but, thankfully, people can still purchase a clean conscious in the form of Carbon Offsets or by ordering a DVD or CD from a comic who drives a Honda Civic at www.getbengt.com. (I’m saving up for a big house and Hummer).
P.S. Some of you might be tempted to give your extra cash to some fund that would provide poor people with trivial stuff like food, clothes, shelter, drinking water, medicine or maybe birth control. BE WARNED! This kind of frivolous donation does NOT OFFSET CARBON FOOTPRINT GUILT!!!
Many guilt ridden rich Americans are VERY excited about Carbon Offsets. One exclaimed, “Now I dont’ have to feel guilty when I use money and resources to make myself feel special and superior! In fact now I can use my money to make myself feel even more morally superior than ever! I’m rich AND I’m saving the planet! I was afraid I was going to have to cut down on my outrageous consumption in order to sleep at night but thanks to Carbon Offsets I can now wrap my mind around my hypocrisy!” Big YES with three excalamation points!!! Isn’t American Innovation great!? Now even the richest among us can live a lifestyle of outrageous consumption GUILT FREE! Bitchin’! Thank you Renewable Energy Credit companies for enabling the ego-driven selfish behavior of our richest “environmentally aware” citizens!
*pulled out of my butt.
Footnotes: (1) My butt (2) Top of my head (3) Out of thin air (4) Stuff my mom told me
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