You should guess once this campaign starts that some of our blogger acquaintances on the other side of the political spectrum would try to find some information out that they hope would cause Dion and the Liberals some embarrassment. Chief among those is Steve Janke, who’s been attempting to be a Blogging Tory super sleuth the past couple of years and hoping to find a story he can fling mud at the Liberals in the hope it will stick - the Garth Turner emails to folks inviting them to attend the Town Hall with Dion in Halton a couple of weeks ago and Steve trying to claim Mr. Turner was doing something not within the rules being the most recent example.
So his latest attempt at this is trying to embarrass the Liberals by saying they’re going to be flying an aircraft that is releasing more GHG then their political rivals.
I sent in a note to some folks at the LPC, and the reply was that they are buying carbon offsets for all campaign travel to neutralize the associated emissions. The company they are using to do that, in case Mr Janke was wondering, is CarbonZero, a Canadian carbon offsets company that helps consumers and businesses neutralize their emissions through offset projects located primarily in Canada.
Travelling by airplane is a necessary evil in Canada during a political campaign. The Liberals have recognized that and are doing their bit to offset that pollution. What would be interesting to know is if the Conservatives are buying their own carbon offsets for THEIR GHG pollution.
Maybe Mr. Janke can use his investigative skills and get back to all of us with an answer on that.
(H/T Stageleft for pointing out the Janke post)
UPDATE @ 10:25 am: Red Tory provides a link to Carbon Zerio if you wish to check them out.
Traveling by plane is not required during 90% of a campaign’s travel time, we just tend to expect it.