By now I’m sure you’ve been informed of all the hypocrisy associated with Al Gore’s Global Warming crusade and movie. How “Green Al” and his Tennessee mansion use 20 times the energy of the average citizen gobbling up most of the available solar energy in his area. You probably heard that he was nailed for speeding in Oregon, wasting gas by driving 15 mph over the speed limit. I’m sure we can all imagine that his gas guzzling flights all over the country in his private jet promoting his movie can’t be the best thing for reducing greenhouse gasses.
But that’s all okay since the Gore’s eliminate their carbon footprint by purchasing what are called “carbon offsets”. Carbon offsets are simply money that you spend, or donate to an investment company that in turn invests those funds in green energy programs. The idea is that helping to advance eco-friendly energy sources makes up for the damage that a person’s normal energy use does & then makes everything even. This all sounds good & noble until to dig a little deeper & find that the investment group that Gore buys his carbon offsets from, Generation Investment Management www.generationim.com, is owned by: AL GORE! So he pays himself, interesting. And why do you think he might be touring the country promoting his movie, scaring people about global warming and convincing them to invest in carbon credits? Because he makes money from them! There are billions of dollars to be made off this global warming scam & “Green Al” has positioned himself to be one of the front runners.
Gore’s credibility is in serious peril as he obviously does not believe in the ideas he is preaching, if he did he would be the first to reduce his energy wasting practices & lead by example. If this were something he believed in you would think his home would be equipped with energy wise systems such as wastewater purification & recycling, geothermal heating & cooling and a rainwater collection system (like George Bush’s Crawford ranch). Gore’s actions speak louder than his words & I’m going to follow his lead. When he takes global warming seriously then I will do the same.
But go ahead, listen to Gore, buy into it, drink the koolaid and join the cult. Al Gore will be laughing all the way to the bank in his private fume-spewing jet.
Gore may be a hypocrite, but global warming is still a big problem. I give him some credit for at least trying to raise awareness, but it is a shame that his bark is worse than his bite.
(if you can't see the fnords they won't eat you)
My generation, (also Al Gore's generation) is leaving you alot of messes, no doubt. But please, if you really are "progressive" which from your comments so far, I wonder, please learn about global warming and how to live positively in your environment.
Al Gore is being bashed again and you're falling for it. Clearly you don't know enough about this complicated subject, or you would not fall for this hype of criticism about his electric bill.
He doesn't say we have to move back to pioneer days and not be consumers. We need to make changes to benefit the environment, and his electricity consumption is NOT a problem considering he buys windmill power. You have incorrectly characterized what buying renewable energy means!!
Please, if you want to call yourselves progressives, learn about the issues so you can discuss them intelligently.
Yes he does buy windmill power. He uses so much of it that he only leaves 1 kilowatt hour per year left for each of the other million or so power users in his district.
I don't dispute global warming though there is still some question as to how much impact we have as humans. I am simply pointing out how this man is "playing on our fears" to make himself more famous and rich.
One of the big problems with smears like this is that they have to alter the facts to make the point. For example: "his gas guzzling flights all over the country in his private jet". Gore doesn't own a private jet. He flies commercial airlines. And I'm not just taking Gore's word for it. This incident from yesterday proves Gore flies commercially: http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/2007/03/gore_security.html
Now let's visit the claim that Gore's home uses 20 times the energy of the average citizen. The "average" home electricity use quoted by TCPR is a national average that includes apartments and mobile homes. In Gore's climatic zone, the East South Central (Dept. of Energy PDF), the average is much higher, thanks to hot, humid summers and cold winters. Within that zone, Gore's usage is three (not 20) times average, and his per-square-foot usage is squarely average. (More here.)
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/28/155124/075
Finally, Gore has never hidden the fact that he buys his carbon offsets from Generation Investment Management. He set up the company with David Blood for that purpose. And what does GIM do with the money for carbon offsets? They invest it in other companies that plant trees.
Now if the you can't get your basic facts straight, the veracity of your entire argument is in question. Either you are just buying into right-wing spin uncritically or you are purposely lying.
These are the lengths that climate skeptics must go to suppress action on global warming. There is no meaningful debate within the scientific community, so the right-wing busies itself with talk about how much electricity Al Gore’s house uses — and even then they distort the truth.
First off, Al Gore does have a private jet. Being seen once on a commercial flight doesn’t discount that. Google it & you’ll come up with thousands of hits.
Regarding energy use in his home, from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research:
“Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.”
Let’s see, average family 2 as much per month times 12 months a year. You’re right, it wasn’t 20 times as much wasted, it’s 24 times as much! We’ll just all use less so he can use more.
Investing in companies that plant trees?
I didn’t know that companies like Aflac, Sysco, Staples and Autodesk were into tree planting. There is a full listing of Generation Investment’s holdings here: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1375534/000117266107000053/gen4q06.txt
No one is trying to suppress action against global warming, I'm just not a big fan of lies, hypocrisy & greedy opportunism.
Gore does not have a private jet. Just telling the same lie over and over again doesn't make it true. All a Google search reveals is that there are plenty of Right-wing hacks willing to tell the same lie, but not once of proof that what they are saying it the truth.
And the veracity and motives of the TCPR is highly in question. Who are these people? Well , a quick check of Alexa reveals their web site gets no traffic. Are they legitimate? Well, again, they claim to be non-partisan but only link to far-right and conservative groups so regardless of what their status is with the IRS, this is a conservative, strongly-leaning Republican organization.
Their press release claimed that Al Gore's home in Nashville consumed 221,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity last year compared to a national average of 10,656 kWh per household. I have no idea whether the number cited for Gore's house is correct, but let's assume it is. The 10,656 number comes from data published by the Department of Energy. But it's an average of all households nationwide (including apartment units and mobile homes) and across all climate regions. As it turns out, the region in which Gore lives--the East South Central--has the highest per household energy usage of any climate region in the country, a good 50% higher than the national average quoted in the press release (I assume this is due to the combination of cold winters and hot, muggy summers). So that's misleading in and of itself.
The Department of Energy lists the average nationwide energy consumption per household as 10,656 kwh and the average consumption per square foot as 13.7 kwh. But for the East South Central region (Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi), the average is 15,447 kwh per household and 19.83 kwh per square foot. As you state in your post, Gore’s consumption is 19.43 kwh per square foot, which is less than the average.
http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2007/02/gores-energy-use.html
Actually it's even lower, 19.1 kwh, as the think tank's data is false. They exaggerated by 30,000 kwh.
The Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, according to bills reviewed by The Associated Press. The typical Nashville household uses about 15,600 kilowatt-hours per year.
The group said that Gore used nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours last year and that his average monthly electric bill was $1,359. Johnson said his group got its figures from Nashville Electric Service.
But company spokeswoman Laurie Parker said the utility never got a request from the policy center and never gave it any information.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GORE_ELECTRIC_BILL?SITE=FLTAM&SEC...
And finally, Aflac, Sysco, Staples and Autodesk are all companies making significant investments in Green technologies. What's wrong with that?
The only hypocrisy here is right-wing shills like you who turn their head on the war profiteering of Cheney's Halliburton but attack a good man like Al Gore with lies.
An intellegent post!
AMEN!
-Amber
I read the stuff about Gore. I agree that he should lead by example. I also belivev though that people should take perosnal responsibility for their actions and not base them on those of others. If people constantly measure their behaviour against others then nothing changes. Gore should be ashamed of the energy consumption of his home, but why should we all mirror his actions. Plenty of politicians lie and twist stuff. I think the awareness campaign he has driven is good in some respects and totally self serving in others. But hopefully people will look to take personal responsibility for what they do and start thinking through the implications of their actions without doing what they want, when they want. Carbon credits/trading is a complete misnomer. It's like a hugely obese individual offsetting their McDonalds consumption by buying anti fat credits from an gym fanatic - guess what.... they'll still die of a coronary
Brian: Will you take the initiative, despite Gores failings, and take decisions that have a reducing effect on the amount of pollution your lifestyle generates?
I agree with you about all you said about Gore. No matter what he's done wrong, we can't just dismiss what he says because he's being hypocritical. Because it is happening. I don't even understand how people can say that it isn't.
-Amber
Apologies for dropping the e
You know, my psychology teacher almost made it a pre-requisite to watch Al Gore's drivel to be in the class. I can't see how that is in anyway related to psychology unless you count a floundering, washed-up, flaky politician trying to gain some publicity an issue.
Anyway, my prof went on to say that we're killing the planet. Yes, we are in charge of it, but did you know that climate changes are the primary reasons for extinctions? And did you know that WE'RE not responsible for the climate changes? We're in a weather cycle that has NOTHING to do with "global warming".
Frankly, I think the issue of global warming is grossly misunderstood and misused to describe the world's climate problems. When are we gonna start blaming the cows for the 18% they contribute to "warming"? When are we gonna slaughter them all for the destruction to the environment? When are we gonna ban cars, people's personal property because we're all making our own little poke holes in the ozone?
Does anyone else get how ridiculous this is all becoming and fast?
No one is banning anything, but we are coming up with alternatives. If people would stop thinking like you and the author of this post, then more people would take advantage of these energy-saving alternatives and help out the environment.
As for the cows, yes, they produce methane, but they always have. They're not the problem, we are. We're increasing everything we do to use up energy and release CO2 everyday.
Global warming is apparent, do some research. It seems like a lot of people should.
-Amber
This post is a bit ridiculous.
I understand what you are saying, and it does seem hypocritical of Gore to do all these things, but you never once mentioned how he defended himself. The media comes up with a lot of false claims, you know.
And Al Gore didn't invent global warming to make money. It's not a scam, it's really happening, and if you can't see that, then you're part of the minority who has a big problem.
People only see what they want to see; you have to check out the other sides of this, both from Al Gore and about global warming.
-Amber