"What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible," Gore's office said, according to Thinkprogress.org. "Once they have done so, he advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gores do, to bring their footprint down to zero."

This ransom in the form of carbon credits proves that it was all about the money in the first place.
Once everyone starts buying credits, we're just paying politicians to make up new disasters to terrorize us with.