A few months back we told you about Google co-founder Larry Page jetting off to Richard Branson’s private Carribean island to attend a conference of mega-rich guys getting hammered and ogling hot chicks in bikinis trying to figure out how to stop Global Warming. Seems like Step 1 would be: Don’t jet off to private islands.
But the Google guys must be doing something right, because no less of a Green authority than Forbes Magazine declared them to be among “The World’s Greenest Billionaires.” Check this compost out:
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page turned their Mountain View, Calif., headquarters into one of the world’s most eco-friendly.
The 500,000-square-foot facility is heated by 9,212 solar panels; all the furniture in one building is made from recycled material, including old blue jeans as wall insulation. Employees can dine (for free) at Cafe 150, which uses ingredients only from farms within 150 miles of the kitchen. Brin and Page both drive hybrid Toyota Priuses and have made personal investments in Tesla, an electric car maker. And Brin reportedly has a solar-paneled rucksack to power his phone and MP3 player.
Which is very handy when you want to listen to some tunes after spewing tons and tons of carbon into the air to get to Branson’s island! Plenty of sun down there.
Well, now the sincerity of Page’s fellow search-engine sultan is under scrutiny as well. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the carbon-conscious coder wants to play Buck Rogers:
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose brainchild helps millions of people navigate cyberspace every day, plans to blast off into actual space within a few years.
Space Adventures Ltd., a Virginia company that has already sent five super-wealthy folks on joyrides to the international space station, said Wednesday that Brin has invested $5 million as a down payment on a space flight aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket headed to the station.
One problem. As the Heritage Foundation’s Nick Loris notes, Brin’s little rocketship ride will be the carbon equivalent of driving an Escalade for over 50 years. That’s a whole lotta planet-killin’! Is the whim of a billionaire really worth wrecking the planet for our children and grandchildren? Apparently Sergey Brin thinks so.
Say, I wonder if it would help if they insulated the rocket with old blue jeans…
Global warming is a scam so Brin rocketing into space isn’t going to make a difference just as his driving a Prius is not going to matter. It is just tiresome having these twits shove all the ‘green goodness’ they are doing down our throats. This whole stop global warming is about us, the hoi polloi, making changes while the big mouth celebs and moguls go about doing what ever they want with nary a thought to their own hypocrisy.
That does it! I’m NEVER using Google again! Just as soon as I Google up a new search thingy.
Sure these companies are the greenest: Federal Green, the color of money.
These are the same green gurus who own a private 757 and a 767 jet. But it’s OK cuz they drive a Prius
$5 million as a down payment? So it’s not even finished being paid for yet. Since he cares so much and doesn’t want to “be evil”, can’t he take that $5 million and donate it to the Sierra Club or World Wildlife Fund or Greenpeace or, hell, Algore instead of wasting it on putting himself in space? He could even donate it to the federal government or probably right to the federal space service NASA.
I still suppport a flat tax