Carbon Offset Purchase Kiosks Are Price Gouging

At the San Francisco California Airport, travelers can now purchase carbon offsets to make you feel less guilty about flying. You simply type in how long your flight is, and then the kiosk will calculate how big of a carbon footprint you will be making and match it to the cost of carbon credits, and then you can pay the price and feel less guilty about the flight. I'm not exactly sure where the money goes or what you are paying for, but some people are okay just paying money so they don't have to feel guilty any more.

The interesting thing is that although the government is ever-watchful of gas station owners who may charge too much, and the government has held many Congressional hearings about oil companies that make too much profit, but yet the government seems to be okay with and actually supportive of a carbon offset purchase kiosk that is charging 60 times the going rate for carbon offsets.

According to the Chicago Climate Exchange, carbon offsets are about 20 cents per ton, and yet the kiosk at the San Francisco Airport is charging $12.24 per ton. That's a big difference- I suppose that this amount is simply the waste and fraud and overhead that is so evil in healthcare companies and oil companies but is perfectly okay in a green machine?

To be perfectly honest, I don't understand this carbon offset shell game that the government is going to be creating and running. Democrats in the US Congress are trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill that will take our nation closer to a carbon offset market, and like most government run schemes, you can expect the system the liberals in government are creating to do accomplish very little and profit a few elite people with political connections.

Questions should be asked- who runs these carbon offset kiosks? Are they paying the same price for the space to set up their machines as the Coke vendors or other businesses at the airport? Is there similar government oversight that would caution consumers about buying nothing that is real at excessive prices? This is a government encouraged scam, and should not be tolerated.

Thanks to TigerHawk for first spotting this.

UPDATE: One of my valuable readers has informed me that the SFO charges 60 times the cost of purchasing a carbon offset because they take that 99% overhead that they charge and use that money to buy wind turbines, solar panels, and other green energy producing sources. I imagine that these are installed using union labor paid at the prevailing living wage, and that there needs to be extensive management costs associated with this whole enterprise. I imagine everyone connected with this has great health care and retirement, and assured jobs for life.

In short, rather than alluding to this carbon offset system being a government racket, I know shall point out that the reason why the government is charging 60x the cost of something is because they are price-gouging the customers and using that money to pad their own pockets in a government-endorsed extortion scheme. All the liberals who go hysterical over insurance companies having too much 'overhead' are more than willing to have considerably more for their own useless projects.

Thanks again for the emails, valuable readers. I agree- after more critical thought, this whole story stinks even more like corruption than it did at first glance.