Irish rock singer Bono listens to former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore (on screen) during a session on “A Unified Earth Theory” at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 24, 2008.
DAVOS, Switzerland – Having climate campaigner Al Gore round to your house is to open yourself to a self-flagellating guilt trip, Irish rock star Bono confessed Thursday.
Sharing a stage with the former US vice president at the annual gathering of world movers and shakers in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the U2 frontman joked that their friendship was a source of pressure on the domestic front.
“He’s been round my house and it’s like… here’s the recycler Al, you know… I’ve got a posh car, but it runs on ethanol Al,” Bono said.
Acknowledging that a career in rock music was not always conducive to a green lifestyle, Bono compared a conversation with Gore to an act of religious contrition.
“It’s like being with an Irish priest. You start to confess your sins,” he said. “Father Al, I am not just a noise polluter, I am a noise-polluting, diesel-soaking, gulfstream-flying rock star.
“I’m going to kick the habit. I’m trying father Al, but oil has been very good for me — those convoys of articulated lorries, petrochemical products, hair gel.”
Bono and Gore were in Davos to push their respective campaigns for poverty alleviation and reducing carbon emissions.
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Related
Is Global Warming a Sin?
by Alexander Cockburn
In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet’s rapid downward slide. Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in “carbon credits” is in formation. Those whose “carbon footprint” is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.
The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world’s present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind’s sinful contribution–and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.
2 responses so far ↓
wil // January 25, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Gag on Whore and Dono at the Scamos Conference.
THE MIDNIGHT SUN » Blog Archive » BONO CONFESSES SIN TO FATHER GORE // January 28, 2008 at 10:38 am
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