I can’t bring myself around to claiming that Gore is a hypocrite. He’s just rich.
At one time, being rich meant that you were entitled to consume larger amounts of human resources than the average joe. The had a positive effect on putting food on the average joe’s table.
Today, with an economy largely dependant on fossil fuel energy instead of human energy, millions of Americans are living lifestyles vastly more gluttoness than King Midas. The rich must live in large mansions, decked out with all the latest energy consuming appliances like swimming pools, hot tubs, saunas etc. The rich fly all over the place and often live far from their offices requiring a significant daily expenditure of fossil fuel. The rich require increasing large yachts these days that consume fuel at a rate that would make a Humvee seem like a lawn trimmer.
If you add up all the carbon dioxide emited annually to support Gore’s lifestyle or anyone else in his economic class, it would make most of our own energy consumption appear insignificant.
Unfortunately we will always have the rich with us.
Well, given your inability to comprehend and digest what you’ve been told repeatedly, and instead keep on repeating the same old strawman, I guess I’ll have to move on to my back up explanation.
Paying for green energy means that you are purchasing energy for your use from a company that generates and puts that energy right into your grid. No, the electricity is not tagged, nor would it be efficient to set up a separate electrical grid for green power to keep it separate from dirty bad power.
Carbon offset means that you figure out how much carbon you are emitting, and try to offset that by investing in something anywhere else that is carbon reducing (it could be in power production, such as wind farming or methane capture or tree planting - your own link has a lot of useful information on the topic).
Yapping, huh? I can see that you are open minded to this issue. It’s no wonder you’re pretty willing to write off all the personal investment that Gore has made on this issue if you consider it all “yapping.”
So, I guess if we were running out of fossil fuels instead of deciding that we have to reduce our usage of them (or sequester the CO2 emissions from them) while they are still available, you would have the same fatalism? Or, would you instead be giving us a lecture about how the market and human ingenuity is so wonderful and with scarcity in the market raising the price on these fuels, it will encourage the development alternatives and so on and so forth?
Well, all that we want to do is give the market the proper signals by no longer allowing everyone to use the atmosphere as a free sewer for their greenhouse gas emissions.
It is amazing how quickly the “skeptic” meme has switched from “Global warming is not a serious concern” to “Well, there is nothing we can do about it, so we might as well not lift a finger to try.”
Is he a hypocrite? I don’t know,I don’t have enough info to say, but this makes me lean toward yes.
Does this undercut the effect of his movie? I have not seen it yet. This makes me less in a hurry to see it.
Why do I feel this way?
1)I get my electicity from the same place as Al, and I am also in the Green Power Switch. Each block of green power purchased is an investment in growing green power, and they have estimated that it adds a certain amount of energy to the mix. The amount of energy is less then the amount added by $4 of non-green energy. But, for the sake of argument, lets say that it is. If that were the case, then 1/2 of his energy bill would need to be green power switch credits. Based on the info given, it is not. I don’t see how he can say that 100% of his pwer is green. I do find it admirable that he is spending what he is spending, however, according to this article, he started in november:
I have been signed up for almost 2 years. How come he only started in November? He is the spokesperson for fighting global climate change. Part of that means being a role model.
I recycle. I am in the green power switch. I drive a crummy ford escort that gets 37 MPG. When the weather is nice, I turn off my Heater/AC and open the windows. But I still feel attacked. I don’t like feeling attacked. I don’t like asking a question and being looked down on. I don’t think people who ask questions should be likened to Holocost deniers. I am all about coming up with a plan.
note: This is what I feel. These are my impressions. Feel free to fight my ignorance. But how you say soemthing is almost as important as what you say.
I do not get this at all from that one statement from his spokesperson. If that’s what it means, I retract what I said.
Hentor, you have NO idea what my feelings about the environment and global warming are, as until this thread, I don’t think I have ever mentioned it before. My husband and I both believe in environmentalism, and we try to live accordingly as much as we can. When I use the word “yapping,” I am not referring to MY attitude towards this issue, but my questioning of Al Gore’s committment to it. I am pleased if what you say is correct, and he is paying for only green power. I’d just like to see some additional information that makes it a little more clear to me that this is what he is doing.
Well, I was kind of joking about that. I know what the film is about, and I think you would have to live in a cave not to. I have heard Gore speak about this issue plenty, as environmentalism is of interest to me. Again, the film IS about greenhouse gas, and it is not clear to me that he has sufficiently reduced his use of them. For about the third or fourth time, if he has, then I say good for him!!! We should all try to practice what we preach.
Thank you, rainwalker78, for giving us more details about how the Green Power Switch works…to me, it’s very fuzzy from the info I have seen in the linked articles.
(Fill in your own blanks so we don’t argue about numbers.)
The average CO2 production in the US is ______.
The average per capita CO2 production for 6 billion people needs to be ____ to significantly affect Global Warming.
The amount of CO2 production required to support Mr Gore’s lifestyle is _____.
Keep in mind it’s not the limo fuel, it’s the limo. It’s not the house’s energy bill; it’s the energy bill required to make the house. It’s not the carbon offsets; it’s the jet instead of the bus instead of the bicycle. It’s all the CO2 production required to support the whole kit and caboodle. Creating an artificial equation and announcing you are carbon neutral does not persuade me.
Due your own due diligence and come to your own conclusion. Calling Mr Gore a hypocrite is completely irrelevant to my point here. My point is that wealth correlates with consumption. Consumption correlates with CO2 production. Neither the drive to accumulate wealth nor consumption is going to change significantly. Mr Gore and his two or three houses and lifestyle are examples of that for me, but I am personally unconcerned with it and offer neither support nor criticism of what anyone else does with their wealth.
Actually, I’m still very skeptical on the whole GW thing. Not sure my own opinion on that is worth more than two cents. Have at it persuading the masses to cut down consumption for the common good.
I wouldn’t suggest starting with the wealthy unless the standard is that everyone cuts X percent. This is quite a different standard from everyone cutting back to X level. I suppose it’s a philosophic difference in whether or not one finds it persuasive to hear a speech from a person consuming way above the level they suggest you should consume.
Yeah, unfortunately the problem with green power is that it’s really tough to make it efficiently. Hopefully, Al Gore will have a lot of success in his quest to get more funding put towards the creation of green power, and research into ways to make it more efficient. But I have a suspicion that you would have to put a lot more money into buying it than what it seems like he has done, in order to be 100% green.
Ah yes, I see now- Electric Swiftboats. :rolleyes:
Note that the “swiftboaters” have done their damage. Instead of debating whether or not their claims are true, we are now debating how Evil Gore is or is not. You have fallen into the trap.
So. A home consisting of the former Vice President of the U.S., his activist wife, separate home offices for each out of which they also run charity foundations, full staffs for these offices, and a contingent of security officers who live with them (probably including a rather extensive security system), is being compared with the “average” U.S. home, a set by the way that includes apartment- and trailer-dwellers. And it’s supposed to be newsworthy that the former home uses much more energy than the latter? I can’t believe some of you aren’t seeing what an utterly bullshit comparison this is.
The house is really big, but considering the number of people who live/work in it, it doesn’t seem excessively so. Even if it were too big, what exactly should Gore do? Sell it and move? That doesn’t help the environment, considering the original house still stands and will just be transferred to another family. Knock the house down and build a new one? How much energy and resources would that use up? Make changes to the house? He’s doing that. Rely as much as possible on green resources? He’s doing that. Do his best to invest in and support geen ventures? Ditto.
Gore’s clean on this one, folks. The real hypocrites are the AEI fuckheads who don’t believe in global climate change or the necessity of cutting down CO2 emissions, but who spread this story as if they have a righteous leg to stand on in trying to shame a mensch like Al Gore.
They are grasping at straws. Reaching to find anything that will resonate with the 30% that still think Bush is sometimes right. Whatever sounds good, but doesn’t hold scrutiny is ok as long as someone somewhere believes it. It is Ecological swiftboating.
I admire your passion.
As to the position you’ve taken, perhaps we can talk again in 5 or 10 years… I’m enough of a geezer to have lived through quite a few passion-producing causes du jour, and so far none have really panned out for their owners.
Perhaps yours will be one that does. Sooner or later someone will get to say, “I TOLD you so!!”
