Mr Gore's Nobel: Like the wife-beater winning for Shelters

Great Debates
281

The last time I checked, Al Gore wasn’t telling anyone that they had to quit their job or move out of their home.

Has he not reduced his energy consumption by one iota, given how big his house is and how often he needs to fly? No flourescent bulbs? No hybrid cars?

How many terrorists has George W. Bush personally killed while IEDs exploded around him?

Who’s been a greater friend to the environment, Al Gore or Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber?

To paraphrase the Good Lord, “The rich will always be with us”.

282

I accept that Gore’s electricity use in his Bell Mead mansion is probably covered at this time by the TVA “Green Switch Program.”

Now how about you answer my question.

283

Er, easily? He’s not 100% green, but he’s working toward it, as evidenced by the installation of solar panels. He’s working to reduce emissions, which come from energy sources like coal and oil. Last I checked, wind and solar energy didn’t produce emissions. You can reduce the amount of emissions you’re responsible for without reducing the amount of energy you use.

Restated, because it’s probably necessary: Carbon emissions =/= energy consumed. Gore wants people to reduce the first, not the second.

284

That’s a lovely bit of equivocation. You should run for office, or consider a career in public relations.

So, in the specific case of his house, do you consider this hypocritical behavior on his part?

Both heating and air travel are difficult to do without producing greenhouse gases. In the case of heating, natural gas releases less carbon dioxide than coal. Therefore choosing to heat with natural gas or choosing to buy an existing home that is heated with natural gas is at present a greener, but not ideal, alternative. I guess that makes the question, what other alternatives were available? The answer is, probably not much. Live in a smaller house? Note that he is currently renovating the house, including adding a solar plant on the roof. So he’s taking an existing home and making it greener at his own expense. Would a hypocrite do that?

Frequent air travel is another thing. He has to do it for his job, which just happens to be acting as an advocate for action on climate change. So the reason he takes frequent air trips—encouraging lots of others to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions—have the potential, if people listen to him, to lead to large reductions in greenhouse gas emission. Again, what are his alternatives if he wants to continue to do his job? He could make a movie, get his message out on the web, train others to give the slideshow so he doesn’t have to travel all over the place, and start a TV network. All of which he has actually done.

He also buys carbon offsets for his air travel and natural gas use. I know you don’t think carbon offsets are a legitimate tactic, and certainly I can see the argument. But Al Gore thinks they’re a legitimate tactic, and when we’re discussing Al Gore’s alleged hypocrisy, doesn’t that count? At this point in time, it’s damn near impossible to live a carbon neutral lifestyle. So you gotta do the best you can, and adapt to new information as time goes on.

What makes someone a hypocrite? When you say one thing and do another. The application of a double standard for others that you have for yourself. Gore’s message is to do the best you can in reducing your carbon footprint and to work for a future where it is possible to live a carbon neutral lifestyle. What matters in the question of, is Al Gore a hypocrite, is, is he doing the best he can and working towards a better future? Given what I know about the choices he has made, I would say yes.

Therefore, in my view, his air travel and his use of natural gas do not make him a hypocrite.

I’m sorry this went so long, but you asked what I thought.

285

I just found this email from a friend in my saved mail. I scanned this thread pretty quickly and it looks like no one posted it yet. If I missed, sorry for the repeat. Here it is:

House #1 A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern “snow belt” area. It’s in the South.
House #2 Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F. ) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the “environmentalist” Al Gore.
HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
An “inconvenient truth”.

286

Man, that just stings! What a dramatic reveal, there, at the end. Delicious.

I’m off to put the snowmobile on the treadmill for a few hours.

287

The “Green Switch Program” renewable energy part of the TVA currently produces about one hundredth of one percent of the power that the TVA generates. Al Gore alone, all by himself, uses about a quarter of the solar generated electricity produced by the entire solar part of the “Green Switch” program. Doesn’t seem like a very workable solution.

Al Gore pays about an additional $6,000 per year so that he can participate in the “Green Switch” program. I know that a 36% increase in their electric bill is not workable for most people.

TVA charges about 7-1/2 cents per KWh for electricity. Signing up for the “Green Switch” program costs an additional 2-1/2 cents per KWh for green electricity, total ten cents per KWh.

Meanwhile, TVA is paying the green energy generators a whopping twenty cents per KWh for the energy they generate. Doesn’t sound like a real killer business model for the future.

It just means that the other users of the TVA energy are paying more for their power, in order to offset the additional costs of the green power added to the system. Al pays an addition two and a half cents, and the users in general pay the rest of the cost, an additional ten cents per KWh so Al can feel good.

One hundredth of one percent?

Color me unimpressed. Al needs to walk the walk before he can claim any respect. That doesn’t mean buy “carbon offsets” and “green power” to justify porcine consumption. That means stop living high off the hog.

w.

288

Well for starters, how much does the White House pay in carbon offsets?

Al Gore uses about one ten millionth as much energy as Republicans do. And yet the environment is less threatened by their energy consumption than by their political power, which is still greater than that of Al Gore.

289

This seems very relevant. Gore’s opponents want him to live/work at an energy-consumption level where he can’t possibly be a real player on environmental policy.

It’s similar to a claim that wealthy people are hypocrites when they advocate for the poor. Only the wealthy have the clout to operate effectively in the public arena; insisting that only the poor can speak for the poor means that the problems of poverty will never be discussed.

290

I don’t know if you’d call it a “study,” but if you do a google search for “Gore” and “private jet,” there is a published claim that he has taken numerous private plane trips in connection with political campaigns.

My conclusion is that if anyone is spreading misinformation, it is you.

Want some extra straw to go with that strawman? I never claimed that he went to work 4 or 5 times a week, but common sense says that if a guy has an office 4 miles from his residence, he goes there on a regular basis. Do you dispute this?

As I said before, the burden is not on me to disprove whatever common-sense-defying scenario you dream up in order to defend Gore.

291

Do you agree that using profligate amounts of jet fuel and natural gas is inconsistent with Gore’s stated “stance”?

292

Are you kidding me? My statement was precise, not equivocal.

What behavior?

Does that mean your answer to my question is “no”?

293

I don’t think Al Gore is analagous to a wealthy person who simply advocates for the poor. I think he’s analagous to a wealthy person who (1) advocates for income redistribution through progressive income taxation; but (2) moves a substantial portion of his assets offshore in order to avoid paying taxes.

It’s hard to imagine that he would be seriously hampered if he took regular planes rather than private jets. Or if he swam at the local health club instead of in a private pool. Or used a guest room instead of a guest house.

Heck, I think that if he did these things, it would enhance his credibility as an environmental advocate.

294

Just to prove that I understand analogies perfectly well -

Al Gore : Conservatives :: “Pop Goes the Weasel” : Curly Howard

295

If he is using them wantonly and excessively and without regard for the repercussions, sure, I agree. But that’s not the case. I’m pretty sure that when they create the first fleet of hybrid jets, Gore will be among the first to start using them. Until then, he has to make do with what’s available.

I can see where this is going to go, though, so let me say that I do not agree with your position and please do not take the first sentence in this post to mean that I do. Given the efforts he’s making to clean up his home’s carbon footprint, I don’t think he’d then squander that effort so casually by needlessly flying via private jet when a public one will do. I am willing to presume there is good reason for doing so when it happens.

296

I’m not sure that I would call his reported use of private jets “making do with what’s available”

SO let’s see . . . if the principle is to reduce one’s emissions as much as possible, it’s still ok to use a private jet for a “good reason”

Can you tell me what you would consider to be a “good reason”?

297

Use the Threaded Mode view & discover that my link to Krugman’s essay was a response to the OP.

brazil84: Not Everything Is About You.

298

This exact same criticism could be leveled at any public figure. How can any politician ask Americans to pay for a new program/war/subsidy or cut portions of the federal budget when they’re own personal spending as so “profligate” that they fly on private jets or swim at a private pool.

Conservatives are transparently using this phony “hypocrisy” claim to discredit Gore’s message, though I don’t doubt there are more than a few useful idiots in the blogosphere who really believe the propaganda. They don’t care a whit if he flies in private planes unless they can use it to score points with the media (where they truly think wars are won or lost). They’re especially interested in crushing Gore because it’s not just his message that’s an “Inconvenient Truth”; his very existence and success in making a positive difference in the world is an inconvenient reminder for those who backed GWB in 2000 that we could have had a president to be proud of rather than the dangerous fool currently in charge.

299

Just off the top of my head, scheduling and staffing.

Scheduling: There may well be times when Gore has made a commitment to appear at a time or place that commercial flights are not easily accessible. I grant this is weak considering the relative ubiquity of air travel these days.

Staffing: Should Gore and aides take up a significant chunk of a commercial flight just for themselves?

I attempted to do some brief research into this, and the web is crawling with nothing but bloggers rallying behind Fox News and Sean Hannity, whose main attack on Gore appears to be that he used private jets during his 2000 campaign. Pardon me if I’m not terribly shocked, since that brings in the staffing issue (not to mention security). The attack was run in February of this year, and Hannity had nothing to say about Gore’s travel habits since 2000.

Yet his hedonistic use of private jets is stated as if it were incontrovertible fact, but are there any cites saying that Gore uses private jets without good reason? His own office has admitted he uses them, but also that he uses commercial flights whenever possible. Why is it so difficult to believe that perhaps ‘whenever possible’ is 90% of the time? I’m not saying this is the case, but must he be made out to be a hypocrite when there is no solid evidence of his hypocrisy? Even if you take his campaign travel as evidence, that was 7 years ago. How has he changed since then? He’s making efforts on the home front, why not the travel front as well?

300

Snopes remarks there’s some truth in this spam.

But, since the guest house, pool & pool house are included in the Gore compound, why ignore the Prairie Chapel’s guest house, the farmhouse built by the original owners and the “double-wide five-bedroom three-bath mobile home”? Plus the swimming pool.

Let’s not forget the 9 to 11 acre man-made pond built & stocked for Bush’s fishing pleasure. (Where does that water come from?)

How much jet fuel does Bush burn for every trip to his “ranch”–which formerly contained 5 pig barns?