When satire writes itself

Written by Climate Discussion Nexus on November 11, 2023. Posted in Current News

We are supposed to believe that it would be incredibly easy to replace reliable, affordable ‘fossil fuels’ with “renewables” that have no downside

Yet in practice odd things keep happening.

Like the recent NHL game at the “Climate Pledge Arena“ (yes, its real name) which boasts of being “carbon neutral”, where the lights wouldn’t come on and teams had to play in a half-lit arena, switching ends periodically so the goalies could take turns seeing the puck.

It’s the phony green economy and corporate (in this case Amazon) virtue-signalling all bundled into one lame farce.

We are, as Dave Barry also said on many occasions, not making this up. Amazon bought the storied property originally called the “Washington State Pavilion” which was part of the “Seattle Center” (neither of which is a very imaginative name, to be fair) when it hosted the 1962 World’s Fair.

Its long and variegated history might be interesting if you lived in Seattle, though even there we wouldn’t put money on it.

But what matters here is this bit:

“On June 25, 2020, Amazon purchased the naming rights; the arena would be branded as Climate Pledge Arena to promote Amazon’s partnership with the environmental advocacy group Global Optimism and its “Climate Pledge”, under which the company (and by extension the arena) vowed to make the entirety of its operations carbon neutral.”

Amazon does not own or operate the arena, of course. Which is arguably a risky approach to major marketing ventures.

In point of fact the actual operators of the arena do claim to be heading toward Net Zero but um well see it turns out to be hard.

As the New York Times admitted a couple of years ago, in a piece titled “An Arena Where the Goal Is ‘Net Zero’ Carbon Emissions, Even From Fans”, reality is tricky:

“The operators of Climate Pledge Arena, home to the N.H.L.’s newest team, the Seattle Kraken, plan to reduce and offset its entire planet-warming footprint.

They still have a lot to prove.”

You ain’t fooling.

As the story goes on:

“Their mission is expensive, time-consuming and risky, and has never been tried at a sports venue before.

Calculating emissions is complex and imprecise, and exposes the arena operators to accusations of ‘greenwashing’ — providing misleading information about the building’s environmental attributes.”

Greenwashing is a problem, to be sure. But self-delusion on a cosmic scale is more so.

Thus it is irony of the deep sort that, in fact, they have managed to have the power fail without reaching the goal.

A splendid metaphor for the entire Green New Deal and Net Zero Movement.

See more here climatediscussionnexus

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