Inconvenient For Gore

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Chief Pedant

He’s asking for a citation to reinforce a point I did not make. I don’t do that.

You’ve repeatedly said that there is not enough green energy. If your point is that there is not presently enough green energy to meet our total energy needs, this is obvious and irrelevant to questions about Gore’s personal amount of use. The only time it would be relevant is when his use leads to the exhaustion of all green energy.

However, for the purposes of building green capacity, it does not make any sense to cut back in the demand for green energy, since as your own cite indicates, this is the best way to build green capacity.

Sarahfeena, the New Coke analogy remains perfectly viable as a model of consumer demand driving availability of substitutes. Cutting back on all energy consumption does not do anything to build green power supply. Switching to green power suppliers does, whether you also cut back on energy consumption or not.

All of this argument is also ignorant of the other information that is available to us - that Gore does take additional measures that reduce his energy consumption, that his per square foot energy usage is already lower than the average for his region, and most importantly, as jshore helpfully reminds us, that this is all a bullshit distraction.

In my opinion, this becomes more and more evident as the argument moves from “Gore is a hypocrite because he’s responsible for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions” to “Gore should at least do something” to “Gore isn’t doing enough” to “Well, he still lives in a big house!”

But as I’ve said before, if Mr Gore’s lifestyle and total consumption level is the right thing to do for GW, where do I sign up?

You can sign up to switch to green power in many communities. Check with your power company and other resources in your community to see what is available. You can also check out the Take Action portion of the An Inconvenient Truth website to see how else you can change your lifestyle for the good of the environment.

[Kimstu]

@Chief Pedant

If Mr Gore’s position on the cause of GW is correct, and the rest of the world, on a per capita basis, consumed the amount of energy required to support Mr Gore’s lifestyle, global warming would be vastly worsened.

Not necessarily. Not if the energy they consumed came from renewable sources.

In fact, if everyone in the world consumed per capita as much energy as the Gore household does per capita, but all the energy used came from carbon-neutral renewable sources, that would be a tremendous victory in the fight to mitigate global warning. At one stroke, we would have cut anthropogenic CO2 emissions down to zero. Wow!

I mean, if you’re allowed to argue from absurd hypothetical scenarios in which everybody in the world can afford to use as much energy as the Gores, then it’s equally valid to hypothesize everybody in the world using 100% green power, like the Gores. If we’re going to postulate a world with magical ponies raining from the sky, we might as well imagine that the ponies lay solid gold eggs while we’re at it.

@Chief Pedant

Green energy will not get us out of that problem because there is not enough of it to replace conventional energy, and the lag time to get there is too great. We therefore have to also reduce. Drastically reduce. Now.

In the context of realistic scenarios, that’s absolutely true. As I already said, the vast majority of us will have to save our way to carbon-neutrality, not spend our way there by consuming massive amounts of green energy.

However, in a realistic scenario, there’s not going to be any global equality of lifestyle or equality of sacrifice. In practical terms, even the most eco-friendly lower-middle-class resident of a modern industrialized society leads a lifestyle that would be globally disastrous if every African and Asian rural villager were to imitate it.

Does that mean that every First World environmental activist is automatically hypocritical or “unpersuasive”? Is it really necessary to reduce one’s environmental footprint to the desired global average in order to be politically credible as an environmental advocate?

Nonsense. Here in the real world, some people are rich and some people are poor, and their lifestyles and consumption patterns are going to be different. As an urban American, I’m inevitably going to consume more than a Bangladeshi sharecropper, and as a wealthy ex-Vice-President, Al Gore is inevitably going to consume more than I do. Arguing that the opulence of Gore’s lifestyle as a wealthy ex-Vice-President somehow affects the plausibility of his arguments about global warming, or refusing to take his arguments seriously until or unless his lifestyle attains some arbitrarily chosen level of globally sustainable austerity, is just childish.

@Chief Pedant

This will probably be my last shot at trying to clarify my point. It’s just too tedious.

Oh, your point is plenty clear. The trouble with it is that it’s weak.

[Chief_Pedant]

@Kimstu

Not necessarily. Not if the energy they consumed came from renewable sources.

In fact, if everyone in the world consumed per capita as much energy as the Gore household does per capita, but all the energy used came from carbon-neutral renewable sources, that would be a tremendous victory in the fight to mitigate global warning. At one stroke, we would have cut anthropogenic CO2 emissions down to zero. Wow!

There isn’t, and won’t be any time soon, enough green energy for this to happen.

@Kimstu

I mean, if you’re allowed to argue from absurd hypothetical scenarios in which everybody in the world can afford to use as much energy as the Gores, then it’s equally valid to hypothesize everybody in the world using 100% green power, like the Gores. If we’re going to postulate a world with magical ponies raining from the sky, we might as well imagine that the ponies lay solid gold eggs while we’re at it.

The issue at hand is whether Mr Gore’s large total effect on CO2 production, while warning about its dangers, renders Mr Gore less persuasive; not whether or not everyone can afford that level. Not sure about ponies and eggs.

@Kimstu

In the context of realistic scenarios, that’s absolutely true. As I already said, the vast majority of us will have to save our way to carbon-neutrality, not spend our way there by consuming massive amounts of green energy.

However, in a realistic scenario, there’s not going to be any global equality of lifestyle or equality of sacrifice. In practical terms, even the most eco-friendly lower-middle-class resident of a modern industrialized society leads a lifestyle that would be globally disastrous if every African and Asian rural villager were to imitate it.

Does that mean that every First World environmental activist is automatically hypocritical or “unpersuasive”? Is it really necessary to reduce one’s environmental footprint to the desired global average in order to be politically credible as an environmental advocate?

Nonsense. Here in the real world, some people are rich and some people are poor, and their lifestyles and consumption patterns are going to be different. As an urban American, I’m inevitably going to consume more than a Bangladeshi sharecropper, and as a wealthy ex-Vice-President, Al Gore is inevitably going to consume more than I do. Arguing that the opulence of Gore’s lifestyle as a wealthy ex-Vice-President somehow affects the plausibility of his arguments about global warming, or refusing to take his arguments seriously until or unless his lifestyle attains some arbitrarily chosen level of globally sustainable austerity, is just childish.

Oh, your point is plenty clear. The trouble with it is that it’s weak.

My point is that Mr Gore is unpersuasive b/c his personal net consumption of energy is so high, and green energy doesn’t get you off the hook without a total reduction. This is certainly an opinion.

Whether it is weak is also an opinion, but we’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of his persuasion by continuing to measure total CO2 output in the world over say, the next ten years.

I predict it will continue to rise, green energy notwithstanding. Few of us want to really cut back our total consumption drastically enough, and even fewer want to put into the calculus our indirect consumption-based effect caused by our wealth. I live in a big (4,000sq ft), energy-efficient house. My gas and electric bill last month (mostly below freezing all month and lots of days in the 0-20F range) was $175. But the CO2 cost of the crap in my house made in Chinese factories because I’m rich enough to buy it, and the CO2 cost of the nice hotels I stayed in, and on and on, was way more than that energy bill cost, green or otherwise.

Perhaps my point is weak. The neat thing is: time will tell so we don’t need to keep belaboring it. So far I haven’t seen too many people wanting to be less rich or wanting to really calculate their true total CO2 effect. Perhaps once again I underestimate man’s charity to his fellow man and dedication to the good of all with behavioural changes that require actual personal sacrifice. Hasn’t happened with Mr Gore and I don’t see it happening very broadly with Mr Public. In the short term we may be a little less profligate but over the long run we’ll backslide in the developed world, and the underdeveloped world will continue to put their family and their comfort first–just like us. Lotta talk. Not much walk.