Word: pretender
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Which puts him one step ahead of most other eco-preeners who actually pretend that it does--the Goracle himself, for example. His Tennessee mansion consumes 20 times the electricity used by the average American home. Last August alone it consumed twice as much power as the average home consumes in a year. Gore buys absolution, however. He spends pocket change on carbon credits, which then allow him to pollute conscience-free...
...work. Sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. were capped, and the trading system succeeded in reducing acid rain by half. But even the Kyoto treaty doesn't put any cap on greenhouse gases in China and India, where billions of these carbon credits are traded. Sure, you can pretend you're offsetting Western greenhouse pollution by supposedly cleaning up a dirty coal plant in China. But China is adding a new coal plant every week. You could build a particularly dirty "uncapped" power plant, then sell hundreds of millions in carbon credits to reduce it to a normal rate...
...Macau Affairs Office, was at pains to stress that it was Beijing-and by implication, not local Hong Kongers-that took the lead on political reform during negotiations with the British prior to the handover. Present-day activists in Hong Kong, Chen said, were just "people who now pretend to be democratic heroes...
...Congress, the country's legislature. The meeting is largely a sham: Although the delegates are "elected," candidates have to be approved by the ruling Communist Party, meaning that despite the occasional hiccup, the NPC passes laws required by the Party leadership. Still, although it's an exercise in pretend democracy - or maybe precisely because it is that - China's government marks the occasion with considerable pomp and ceremony, scores of scarlet banners rippling in the breeze over Tiananmen Square, along with lots of marching guards, motorcades and blanket coverage in the state-controlled media...
...Pretend you don’t know what “conflict of interest” means: So what if your managing editor is also the front-man of the band you prominently profile in your music section? It doesn’t mean you can’t still ask hard-hitting questions like, “What drives you to put out an industry level production while handling the rigors of the number one university in the country...