I was thinking specifically of Schwarzenegger, the current non-candidate. He is touting all sorts of green stuff like ethanol, yet owns multiple Hummers.
But he’s not the only one. Every single senator is a millionaire with a big empty house in their home district and another in DC
This questions turns on whether the broad population finds leaders persuasive even if their personal life does not match their recommendations for the polloi.
My observation is that the polloi do, in fact, find such leaders persuasive. Mr Gore, for instance, has many followers who look to his Global Waming message and putative “carbon neutrality” with great deference. Yet if everyone in the world were to consume at the level of Mr Gore’s total consumption, carbon output would soar.
I personally agree with Gandhi: I must be the change I want to see in the world.
This is not, however, an average position. World history is full of leaders who want their followers to make sacrifices they do not themselves personally make. The masses have a history of doing so, and giving their leaders a pass on the expectation that the leader will also make the same sacrifice.
As in the first reply to the OP, it’s very reasonable to say the rich and famous are helping green causes and they are hypocritical. While this may be a reflection on the masses, it is nevertheless the case.
Well, according to Snopes…
Wouldn’t surprise me to find that it’s pretty nasty. There is no domestic manufacture of LCD in the US, at least in part because of the toxic nature of the processes.
Now imagine decreasing it even more by skipping Flouro’s and buying LEDs.
Sure incremental steps are better, but I disagree with the notion that LEDs aren’t quite here yet. They’re here. $ 10-15 for a bulb that will last a decade is negligible.
Of course, I agree, but I don’t think that the price difference for CFL vs LED is significant enough to justify CFLs. Besides CFLs don’t work with dimmers, LEDs do.
Kanicbird I have never heard that LEDs cause enough heat to fail. I’ve not noticed LEDs causing heat really. One of their disadvantages over Incandescents is that incandescents heat your house just a little, so you are trading heat away for the lower wattage. Maybe it works like that in an outdoor lamp where the LED is in a black housing and it heats up and melts the circuit, but otherwise I cannot imagine it being that big of a deal.
But it takes someone as special as Ghandi to both (a) be the change and to (b) make others see it.
If Gore was living a truly zero-impact lifestyle, nobody would have heard anything he had to say, because he would be living off passive solar heating and spending all his time growing his own food and maintaining his shelter.
This may be a hijack, but let us assume for a moment that Gore and his movie have made a net contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions*. All that would be required would be for The Al Gore Show to inspire a few people to change their lifestyles to a sufficient extent to offset the carbon he emits through his. Considering the exposure and popularity of the Show, I think it is reasonable to assume that this is the case.
Therefore, if he truly was the change he wished to see (i.e. living a zero-impact lifestyle) he would not have had that positive net effect.
I am the change I wish to see, but it doesn’t make a whit of difference to anybody but me. If I wanted to spread the word a bit more, I would have to change my lifestyle and be less of the change I wish to see.
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- I recognize that measuring carbon offsets is very fuzzy math, at best. But it is the only metric we have right now to express relative greenness.
(I think you might be talking about my post #13 - unless I missed one of kanicbird’s posts.)
You’re correct in that LED bulbs are really good about not shedding heat (especially like incandescents). The problem isn’t so much with the bulb, though, but rather with the LEDs semiconductor junction. (And you’re probably also right in that outside fixtures are probably the ones most affected by this.)
Here are some links that explain things better than I ever could.
Understanding power LED lifetime analysis (Warning: PDF)
Power and Heat Management Affect LED Efficiency, Lifetime
I just think it’s important that people know some of these details up front, so they don’t completely disregard LEDs as a viable alternative if they have one prematurely fail on them. (Consumers seem really prone to that sort of thinking, IMO. Rightly so, in some cases.)
LilShieste
I think this is an excellent post that definitively answers the topic of the thread. Any particular celebrity is one person among 300,000,000 in the USA, or alternatively among 7 billion on Earth. They don’t possess the resources to physically make a huge change in the situation. The one large resource they do possess in their celebrity status, and the change they make will be determined by how they use that status. Using it to bring the good news to other people is the best path to change.
Mostly, I think they do good. Ed Begley is certainly one example, but he doesn’t rise to the level of megastar prominence, like, for example, Angelina Jolie, and hence he can live in a small, ordinary house quite easily. For the celebrities on the level of Jolie and her ilk, I’m not too quick to condemn them for living large if only because a lot of that is necessary just to keep the papparazzi at bay.
Right you are, I did have a sort of notion in the back of my head that I might be responding to the wrong person. Sorry about that.
Thanks for the info, I’ll read it later when I’m home. I am about to switch to LEDs. I am not yet the change I want to see in the world. Right now I live in an apartment and we are trying to buy a house, so even home improvements that are portable haven’t been a priority, but I want to get something I can fix up and make it as green as possible.
As for Al Gore. I do not think that living such an extravagant lifestyle is what makes him influential. He could very easily cut down on his extravagance and still be listened to. Buying Carbon credits is fucking lame. It’s not at all Earth friendly it’s just saying, “I’m rich enough to live like a fat cat who cares not a whit for the environment but appear like I do because I can purchase karma.” Al Gore is a first rate Hypocrite. That does not mean that one should not listen to his message, because he is saying the right things, but he’s not doing shit to implement them in his own life.
I believe we shouldn’t discourage people from preaching the message, because well, ‘fake it til you make it.’ It does some good, they ARE helping, but not directly. If you want to see a celebrity that puts her money where her mouth is, look at Darryl Hanna. She drives a biodiesel El Camino and lives entirely off the grid. She’s awesome.
Sorry to resurrect this thread from the dead, but I was recently, out of curiosity, shopping online for LED bulbs.
mswas, can you give me a cite that LED bulbs are only $10-15 apiece? Because everything I’ve seen puts them at $120 and up for a bulb that can reasonably replace a 60W incandescent.
The 13W CF bulbs I use are rated at 800 lumens and 8,000 hours of life. They cost $4 apiece, give or take.
A typical comparable LED bulb ( Theledlight-Fully stocked LED lighting store with all the latest LED Products for home and business … not in stock, btw ) – which gives up to 700 lumens, pulls 15W(!), and lasts 40,000 hours, costs around $120 apiece (give or take). Now, the only advantage I see here is longer lifespan, but for that 5 times longer life, I’m paying 30 times more.
Please show me where LED bulbs–that can replace a standard 60w incandescent bulb–cost $10-15 apiece and result in huge energy savings. Because I’m just not seeing it. (And if it were true, I very well might begin replacing my CFLs with LEDs this year.)
The people complaining about Al Gore’s private plane and John Edwards’ designer haircuts are doing it to spin public perception. They’d much prefer that anyone who cared about the environment be a rumpled ascetic with a $4 haircut like Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich, because people like that are a lot easier to marginalize as quixotic kooks.
toadspittle I think I was misled by some past research that gave me a different notion of luminosity. I saw something that said incandescents were about 3 lumens per watt, and I saw 300w bulbs being sold as replacements for 75 watters.
However the best deals are on Ebay and here is a 600 lumen for 30 bucks.
Not living in a mansion is a far cry from being unkempt. There’s a pretty big middle-ground there.
Doesn’t affect my point, though. If you can’t make 'em look like left-out-of-sight kooks, make 'em look like fat-cat hypocrites. Influential, well-connected and -funded, mainstream political figures embracing and promoting environmentalism are these people’s worst nightmare.
OK. Thanks for the link.
dupe
As I said, those aren’t the only two options. Kooks and hypocrites are not the only options. You can live an austere lifestyle and still make a few allowances for being slick and stylish without being extravagantly wasteful.
Neither.
What mode of transportation do you expect Al Gore to use? This is the year 2007. To expect Al Gore to traverse the United States on mule or horseback is ridiculous. To think Al Gore, with all of his responsbilities, will somehow acquire the lifestyle of the Dutch Amish is equally ludicrous. I’ll never understand the right. Instead of examining or even rebutting Gore’s claims in An Inconvenient Truth, the right chooses to dottle over home energy bills paid by Gore. Give me a friggin’ break.
The issue of global warming is unrelated to the energy Gore’s home utilizes. Gore has repeatedly made clear the importance of government intervention is addressing global warming. The Government can, for example, raise mileage standards for cars, could increase NSF funding for alternative energy, and, in general, swing the country toward rapid technological change.
Now, if consumers were able to purchase solar-powered cars or vehicles that run on plasma or some such, then I would agree Gore is a hypocrite. But he isn’t. Fuel efficiency in cars is still in its infancy and while fluorescent lights are promising they are either unattractive or too expensive for most consumers. I wager it is very difficult to be “green” while enjoying the same standard of living as everyone else. This is what I think Gore is trying to change. He is not attempting to lead the American people by example. He is just slapping some sense into the Legislative and Executive branches of government.
- Honesty