Word: carbonic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...then portentously announced that for the first time ever, the Academy Awards ceremony had gone green. What did that mean? Solar panels in the designer gowns? It turns out that the Academy neutralized the evening's "carbon footprint" by buying carbon credits. That means it sent money to a "carbon broker," who promised, after taking his cut, to reduce carbon emissions somewhere on the planet equivalent to what the stars spewed into the atmosphere while flying in on their private planes...
...other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation...
...very few of the very rich have some awareness of the emptiness--if not the medieval corruption--of ransoming one's sins. Sergey Brin, zillionaire founder of Google, buys carbon credits to offset the ghastly amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Google's private Boeing 767 but confesses he's not sure if it really does anything...
...elect members of the Election Committee and the Legislative Council, and are not required to pledge allegiance to either Hong Kong or China. The Basic Law also allows non-Chinese permanent residents to be members of both the Legislative Council and the Election Committee. Again, these arrangements are not carbon copies of democratic practices elsewhere. Together with the election methods, they form sensible, pragmatic and perhaps interim answers to Hong Kong's unique situation...
...hand, Sir Richard Branson has pledged millions of dollars in the fight against global warming. On the other hand, his Virgin Galactic will send passengers on a joyride, first via jet, then via spacecraft, burning up an insane amount of carbon-based fuel and adding substantially to global warming. Is one of Branson's activities supposed to cancel the other, or am I the only one who is terribly confused in this regard? Daniel Long San Francisco