Selling Indulgences

In the age of the carbon menace, companies are now raising tens of millions of dollars by promising to remove carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. Some companies seek to recycle the carbon into new synthetic fuels, while others are promising that just providing the service of carbon capture alone will be profitable.

When Martin Luther posted his infamous 95 Theses on the church door, his major grievance regarded the selling of indulgences. "If you sin you'll burn for an eternity in hell," clergyman told their followers, "but if you make a donation then you'll be okay sinning a little bit." It's quite clear that they were running a racket, peddling fear to extort from the people. They were little better than the mafioso threatening, "It'd be a shame if something happened to your nice little store here."

The carbon offsetting industry is nothing more than a modern day indulgence racket. "Your carbon sins are unforgivable," they say, "unless you pay us." Al Gore has become a billionaire simply by guilting the gullible into just handing it over to him. His business is to sell indulgences to individuals citizens and organizations. But carbon capture is an attempt to expand the money-making scheme into selling indulgences at the civilizational level. "Your modern economy will destroy the planet, unless you give us some money."

Not only is carbon unfairly demonized by the ridiculous "magic multiplier" theory, which posits that carbon dioxide triggers an increase in water vapor - the real greenhouse gas - but human release of carbon dioxide is steering us away from global carbon starvation. We are still far below the carbon dioxide levels that modern plants evolved to prosper in. The worst thing we could do would be to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide!

Fortunately for us, liberals always worsen whatever they're trying to fix. Electric cars and windmills cause more carbon emissions, despite all intentions. So we can be fairly sure that "carbon neutral" fuels will, in the aggregate, cause more carbon emissions than burning fossil fuels directly. (Sometimes naivety and incompetence can combine to work in our favor.) The process of carbon-neutral fuel production means utilizing energy to transform carbon dioxide and water from the atmosphere into burnable organic compounds. It's exactly what plants do. Humans have tried to harness that process by producing ethanol from crops. The problem is that modern agriculture is a net consumer, not producer, of energy. More calories are burned growing, shipping, and processing the grain than the calories of the grain itself. Fields are places where fossil fuels are transformed into human food, and not efficiently either. Thus, taking that same food and processing it to turn it back into fuel is nothing but an exercise in futility. The Catch-22 is that transforming carbon dioxide into a complex organic molecule takes a lot of energy, and our only dense energy sources at present are fossil and nuclear fuels.

For now, we go on burning fossil fuels because it's the only thing that really works. Climate apocalypse advocates believe that the modern economies are destroying the planet through carbon emissions, yet refuse to give up the many benefits of modern life. They feel guilty, so they are prime marks for an old-fashioned fear-and-guilt racket. They are basically paying a company to help them feel better about themselves. I'd suggest that liberal guilt is booming market that anyone should try to get into. I know a guy who just retired in his 30s thanks to the passive income he is generating off solar panel companies he founded. Be smart like him.