Published online: Oct 17, 2014
White Out & Wide Open—The Blog
(ED--We’re going through our old blogs and reposting them so you can get a little taste of winter during these summer months.)
OK, this headline may be somewhat misleading … but give us a few paragraphs to support our claim by offering a historical (or is it hysterical) perspective on this unprecedented contribution to Mother Earth.
We base our numbers not on actual dollars (who uses real money nowadays in contributing to saving the planet?), but on your basic “common core” math principles being taught at public schools near you (which opens the door for a future column).
First, a little historical perspective is required. Back in 2006, Sir Richard Branson pledged $3 billion over the next 10 years to the global warming community … not in real dollars, but rather in money being spent to “find cleaner fuel” for his five airlines and one train company.
In other words, his contribution was based on him giving his money to himself to fuel his companies with “green” energy, thus reducing his carbon footprint and making him the next messiah in the environmental movement. (Article printed in The New York Times, Sept. 21, 2006 and follow-up in the Blue&Green Tomorrow blog.)
But of his $3 billion pledge, he could only manage to deliver about $300 million to himself … and that was in using corn ethanol which has since been “widely discredited as a greened alternative to fossil fuels because of its climate change impacts and for driving up the cost of food.”
So at SnoWest, we pledged to pay ourselves $2.3 billion over that same period in our efforts to fight global warming. Now let’s do the math—$2.3 billion is $2 billion more than Richard Branson’s actual $300 million that he paid to himself. (We noticed he lost the “sir” title in the follow-up article … apparently he dropped in credibility with the environmental royalty.) Obviously, we don’t have that kind of money laying around so we’re going to have to owe it to ourselves … unless we get some of that government grant money we mentioned in last week’s blog.
Anyway, after doing the math, it’s apparent that the efforts at SnoWest are much more effective in solving the world’s problems than those of Branson, since we pledge not to use corn ethanol … which really isn’t friendly to the environment unless you don’t factor in people starving.
So the editors of SnoWest will sleep well at night knowing that we’ve done our part in making the earth greener … although there’s also been no word on whether we’re going to receive a “knighthood” for our efforts.