Come on Hentor, you’re more intelligent than that. Big house = more energy use. The very first sentence of your link says:
Gore has been preaching the global warning message for many years now. It’s nice that he is finally trying to catch up with his message, but why isn’t he already there?
Yes, that’s what he should do. That’ll be one less monster home that will be built in the future, and he can move into a smaller and/or carbon neutral home.
I’m just not seeing it. Maybe I’m misremembering An Inconvenient Truth and projecting my own beliefs onto Gore, but isn’t his point something like this:
a) Humanity needs to change the way it generates energy to reduce the amount of CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere
b) We can only get there through society-wide action
c) To get there, it isn’t necessary to radically alter our lifestyle. We can continue to live thoroughly modern lives in large house with 21st century conveniences, so long as we aren’t burning huge piles of fossil fuels to provide our energy.
If that’s the case, where’s the hypocrisy in having a large house consume a high volume of non-carbon intensive electricity?
I think the fact that a wealthy and powerful figure like Al Gore uses too much energy totally discredits his message that the wealthy and powerful are using too much energy.
So if the rest of the world followed Gore’s example…would that even be possible? A carbon neutral world where all the households were using energy at this rate? I certainly don’t know, but I suspect not. I’m a bit skeptical on whether buying these credits morally nullifies large consumption, although it’s obviously better than not buying them at all.
I have to point out that you just said, “An ad hominem attack is perfectly valid if it’s an ad hominem attack.”
Has Gore ever said there was a moral imperative to fighting global warming? I was under the impression that he was arguing there was a practical imperative to fighting global warming.
Further, has Gore demanded that anyone radically alter their lifestyle in order to fight global warming? Has he instructed people to sell their homes and move into smaller houses? Stop driving cars? Avoid air travel? What, exactly, has he asked other people to sacrifice that he has not sacrificed himself?
The difference between the two situations is that we can demolish the pastor’s arguments against homosexuality on their own merits, which the people behind this ad hominem cannot do with global warming. Making fun of the closeted god-botherers is just icing on the cake.
I think he’s implying that there’s a moral imperative, if the point is that we are going to save the planet and the people on it.
I don’t know if he has demanded those things or not, actually. Perhaps I am wrong in saying that he doesn’t expect others to reduce their energy consumption. Seems strange to me that he would not include this as a reasonable way to cut down on CO2, but for the sake of argument, let’s say he hasn’t. I still think that if he believes that stopping global warming is that important, he would do whatever he could do, personally, to help the situation.
I don’t understand why his house uses so much electricity, anyway. He uses about 30 times more kilowatt hours than we do at our house, but his house is only 4 times bigger. This makes no sense to me, and seems wasteful even regardless of global warming issues.
Yes, There’s no limit to the amount of carbon-free power we can produce.
I am too, but only because a lot of the ‘carbon credits’ seem to involve planting trees or other such nonsense instead of actually funding power which is produced from non-fossil fuel sources. How would credits representing the actual production of a unit of carbon neutral energy would do anything other than nullify its consumption, as far as the greenhouse effect is concerned?
All rich people are equal. Some are just more equal than others.
Just want to remind everyone that Al Gores pays his electric bill just like everyone else (with the speaker fee he gets promoting his philosophy of conservation). Just knowing his message moves in a higher plane above the rest of us gives me the global warm-and-fuzzies. He comes from good stock. His family has always held a belief that big oil was a crude way to make money and he’s lived his life accordingly.
Al’s commitment to nature and mankind is legend. He’s well known by the Kitanemuk Indians for his investment in their historic lands. It’s no Occident that the U’wa Indians feel the same way. It’s these actions that have made him a profit among profits.
We could all learn a thing or two from Al’s unwavering commitment. We should strive to maintain a higher interest in the things we value most so we can pass them down to our children. He’s provided a wealth of information to his heirs that will live on for generations.
He’s shown us how personally rewarding it can be to live a conservative lifestyle.
Yes. And less energy use = less energy use. Or are you suggesting that Gore just moved into a big house? Come on, John Mace, you’re more intelligent than that.
Do you know something we don’t? When is it that Gore started living this way, and how do you know “he isn’t already there”? And where is “there”?
It simply has not been demonstrated that Gore has failed to reduce his energy consumption, which is all that he has suggested that others do.
This reminds me of the attacks on Edwards for championing concerns for the poor while not also being poor himself. It seems awfully convenient that those who would concievably be “appropriate” to deliver messages that conservatives don’t like are also those who would never be able to deliver those messages. Likewise, it sure must be nice to support conspicuous consumption and the shitting on of the poor, so that you never have to worry about being a hypocrite.
Low hanging fruit.
“Bush could not have built a more illustrative model for market-driven sustainability if he’d tried.”
Dunno about Cheney’s private residence.
Despite all the charges of hypocrisy (and defenses against such charges), I have still not seen much in the way of facts, here.
Gore lives in a large house that uses a lot of energy.
OK.
Does he live at home with a wife and a couple of kids?
Or
He might be a horrid hypocrite or he might not be, but I am seeing a serious lack of information regarding his actual energy usage in comparison to the amount he would use if he changed lifestyles.
Perhaps a bit of research or understanding is the first order of business then. Or you could just react as conservative attack groups would prefer you to do.
I think he very much hopes that others reduce their energy consumption, and I think it certainly hasn’t been shown that he has not also reduced his. I know that I haven’t installed my solar panels. Have you?
Perhaps he should do something like develop a presentation on the topic, refine it over the years, deliver it over a thousand times around the world, have it turned into a movie seen by millions more and win an Oscar for it. That seems like a personal mission to me, but who could ask anyone to give that much time and effort to something like global warming?
Not unless he says that nobody should live in a big house or use lots of electricity. But I’ve never seen him make any such claim. AFAICT, his basic message is that we as individuals and as a society have to come up with ways to significantly reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions. That doesn’t necessarily imply that everybody’s got to keep their energy use to a minimum at all times. (Especially not if it’s energy derived from renewable sources.)
If you want to argue that Gore’s a hypocrite, you have to show convincingly that what he practices and what he preaches actually contradict each other. Sure, if Gore lives in a mansion and uses lots of energy then he’s arguably passing up some good chances to showcase an optimally eco-friendly lifestyle for the public. But that isn’t the same thing as hypocrisy.
It probably will have that result in the minds of many people who just listen to the “Gore’s a hypocrite!” rhetoric without bothering to find out the facts or think about the issues.
Gore can’t win this game. If he did sell his home and move off the grid, they’d be calling him a total loon. Since he hasn’t, and instead he’s taken reasonable steps within his own home and his own life to reduce carbon consumption, then he’s a hypocrite.
Gore is leading by example, showing that you don’t have to go overboard like Ed Begley, Jr. to be more friendly to the environment. I think it makes him a much more effective spokesperson, since the changes he has made are more in line with what the average person can do.
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Once again, Kimstu concisely and incisively gets to the heart of the matter. Of course his primary concern is not energy reduction, but the emission of greenhouse gases. :smack:
He’s already made clear that he uses 100% green power (purchased through a program called the Green Power Switch program, and generated through clean, renewable resources).
I hope that all of you of the “Gore is a hypocrite” class spread the word back up the channels with equal fervor.
Also, does this not go to show that we can keep our lifestyles, while still making environmental choices, and that Gore’s message is not that we can’t have anything and still be green? I mean, hell, if it’s this easy, this is a good thing, right?
100%? Can you quote your source for that? The article in the OP indicated it was only a fraction.
BTW, I snooped around on Snopes, and they are researching the veracity of this article, but don’t have a conclusion yet. I’ll be happy to change my position if they turn up evidence that he doesn’t have an overly large carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, it appears that advocacy is a double-edged sword. If an advocate reaches the point of becoming influential, the cause becomes vulnerable to being dragged down along with his credibility under the weight of the ad hominem attacks.