A recent opinion article by Charles Krauthammer in Time magazine criticized Al Gore for being hypocritical on his own stance with the environmental movevement. While I'm sure all of us thought to ourselves, "Wow, Al, you sure produce a lot of carbon emissions with all those plane flights around the country" while watching An Inconvenient Truth, we realized that one cannot get the word out about environmentalism without doing some things that are bad for the environment, such as using paper to print educational pamphlets and using transportation to visit different cities and speak to the people there.
What Krauthammer would like to see is for Gore to use some of the tips that he recommends to others in his own life -- turn off your lightbulbs, ride public transportation. First of all, Al Gore cannot ride the bus. He's just too famous -- he would never get anywhere or be able to do anything. In addition, he is in a constant state of applying to use solar energy in his house in Tennessee, but his city hasn't approved them. But I'm not here to defend Al Gore, I'm here to expose hypocrisy in exposing others' hypocrisy.
Conservatives believe in business and in capitalism and that if you work hard and make money, you should be able to spend it however you want. Certainly if you've worked hard to accumulate millions of dollars, you should be able to buy a mansion. They fight for this every day of their lives. However, when they say that Al Gore shouldn't preach environmentalism and have a mansion at the same time, what they're saying is that it's okay to be rich and have things unless you are the slightest bit of an environmentalist. If you want to save the environment, you have to live in a teepee and create all your own food, or you're being a hypocrite. But environmentalism is not all or nothing! We can have capitalism, and environmentalism, too! Certainly, if we all lived in teepees and walked everywhere, the enviroment would greatly benefit. But I don't want to hear conservatives support business and money and capitalism until that person cares about the environment. If you believe Warren Buffett deserves his mansion, you should believe that Al Gore deserves his mansion. Trying to expose Gore as a hypocrite only serves to expose your own hypocrisy.
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I think Al Gore was raising awareness about global warming. . .Obviously he can't do everythink because of his fame. . .And you also have to remember he can't pass things along; people have to be behind him and support him.
And let's say he is being hyprocritical (which I don't think he is) AT LEAST he is raising awareness to the world. . .Yes it's wrong but it will show others how to decrease their daily impact.
Bottom line is he can talk the talk but can't walk the walk. As private citizens, we can afford to do that if we want to. He's a past Vice-President and is still very much in the public eye. He cannot afford to do that.
He is a hypocrite indeed. President Bush has once again beat Al Gore in yet another arena of issues. The Investors Business Daily ran an article showing how much more efficient and less polluting the President’s Crawford Ranch house is as compared to the “Gore Complex” in Tennessee.
As USA Today described it: "Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is called 'gray water,' and one tank for 'black water' from the kitchen and toilets." The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater"
Recently it has been reported that the Gore Complex uses 20 times the amount of energy as compared to us common folk and with that contributes that much more of those damaging “Greenhouse” gasses that the ex-Vice President has made a career out of fighting.
Now a big deal has been made about how Gore has been purchasing “Carbon Credits” to offset his 20x energy use but the fact is the former Vice President is still producing 20x the “Gasses” that he implores the rest of us to cut back on…
In addition, "the Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems use." As Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted: "It's interesting that Bush seems to actually practice conservation, while Gore seems to want to buy his way out of his obligations."
The fact is that the President and Mrs. Bush designed their Crawford Ranch “Eco-friendly” and built it many years before Al Gore found his calling in life.
Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm call Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.
And you would think President Bush would get a great deal on petroleum products from his “Big-Oil” buddies that the liberals love to talk about. Why isn’t the President abusing his “Oil rich” status and using it wherever possible?
Better yet. Why didn’t Al Gore design and build his “Complex” with the same features the President used in his Crawford ranch???
http://ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=258075474834657
http://rightsideva.blogspot.com/2007/03/again-how-can-that-be.html
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