A New Political Low

So yeah, Max Baucus, our senior Senator from Montana, has gone from taking credit to actually BUYING credit.

It's natural for politicians to take credit, especially for work they didn't do. But Baucus apparently needs even more credit than he can take. So he's buying it.

In this Gazette article, Max Baucus says he buys "air pollution credits." Supposedly that makes him not guilty for all the global warming he causes by flying, driving, and giving speeches.

I bet I'm not the only one asking, "Um, what?" Here's how it works.

Baucus flies home on a jet. That jet dumps X carbon into the atmosphere. Max's share of that carbon is X/200 -- or maybe X/150 since he probably talked while flying and contributed even more to global warming. So let's call X/150 Max's carbon emissions for the flight.

So maybe somewhere else in the world, there's an activity that takes X/150 carbon back OUT of the atmosphere. If Max could have credit for that, his flight would be "zero emission," and he'd be a good little environmentalist. Like any politician, he went looking for a way to take the credit. Turns out its for sale. A company called Native Energy sells the credit for the work they do that takes carbon out of the atmosphere.

Someone else does the good environmental thing, Max Baucus takes the credit. Nothing new here. Except this part:

What does Native Energy do that supposedly takes carbon out of the atmosphere? Well, they invest in wind farms -- of the kind environmentalists kill in Montana. But... um... OK, so a wind farm has zero emissions. But putting in nothing is not the same as taking something out. The only way a wind farm could be said to take carbon out of the atmosphere is if the electricity from the wind farm REPLACED electricity from, say, a coal plant.

Does that really happen? Of course not. When you get a new 50 megawtts from a wind farm, does anyone really believe a coal plant somewhere reduces production by 50 mw? No.

So. Take credit. Take credit for something you didn't do. BUY credit for something you didn't do. BUY credit for something that never even got done in the first place. Yup, it's a new political low.

But at least Baucus looks good.