Suppose that a friend of yours is trying to lose weight, and he tells you, "If I eat this salad, it will be good for me. So then I can have cake for dessert." What would you tell your friend?
Al Gore is trying to say that by investing in alternative forms of energy, he is "offsetting" the heavy use of conventional electricity for his home. This is like saying that eating salad entitles a dieter to enjoy cake for dessert.
The idea of a "carbon offset" is that when you do something that causes carbon dioxide emissions to increase you might at the same time donate money to a cause that reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide by a similar amount. However, not all "carbon offsets" truly offer the sort of straightforward one-for-one trade that the term "offset" implies. Some of the "carbon offsets" are nothing but pork-barrel subsidies to energy producers, and their net effect on carbon emissions is problematic.
Subsidizing "good" energy in order to justify using "bad" energy is like eating salad in order to justify eating dessert. It is an exercise in self-deception. (In this context, good energy means energy that is produced with little or no emission of carbon into the atmosphere.)
Via Planet Gore.
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