Will the real Warren Buffett, please stand up?

Back in June 2007:

Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Today, November 2009:

Warren Buffett tells CNBC's Becky Quick that Berkshire Hathaway has talked to five big financial firms about buying their tax credits.

Buffett says he can't name any names due to confidentiality agreements, but notes that Berkshire has been buying tax credits since 1990 and will continue to do so in the future.

Can someone reconcile Buffett with Buffett for me?

UPDATE: Michael Corkery is just making the dissonance louder:

Isn’t it ironic that Buffett’s deal is sparking a lot of discussion about how railroads are an eco-friendly industry when much of Burlington Northern’s revenue comes from hauling coal? (The fossil fuel accounted for almost half the tonnage that the railroad hauled in the first nine months of the 2009).