22 May 07 - 17:38Al Gore doesn't practice what he preaches
OK, so slamming Al Gore for being hypocritical about energy usage isn't exactly new (see the fuss back in February about the amount of power consumed by his Nashville mansion). But I saw this Time article today (via BoingBoing) and was struck by the photo of Al Gore's office. All the blog I read that linked to it just said something along the lines of "what a mess his office is". Never mind the mess! The guy has three, count them, three 30" widescreen monitors hooked up to his Mac Pro and not content with that he has what looks like a 32" LCD TV running in the background. Oh and despite the fact that it's clearly a very bright sunny day as evidenced by the open window to his right, he also has a desk lamp shining down on his keyboard (not sure why, it must be shining on his monitor as well and I know I hate that).
By the way, in searching for a link to the Februrary story I was pretty amazed by the way it was handled in the coverage that Google could drag up. The story I linked above was about the most neutral I could find. One of the top links was this report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. This commentary doesn't even bother to go to the effort of digging up the lower (and apparently correct) energy usage figures for Gore's home. It basically says in many more words that nothing in the story is wrong but you shouldn't take any notice of it because the originators of the story are a Republican policy group. Now I know there's something subtle going on here so I'll try and be clear: If the story was wrong it would be fine to absolve Gore from any guilt. It is also fine to be suspicious of the story because it came from a Republican source. But if you make the assumption the story is true (which it is mostly), then it doesn't matter what the source is. You can't tell people that the story isn't a big deal because it came from a biased source. The fact is that Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite.
Another great example of telling the truth, but still trying to make it fit your own completely opposite political affiliation comes from the Crooks and Liars blog. So they've done some research and found out that the figures put out by the evil Republicans are wrong! Surely that is vindication for Mr. Gore? No, because although the 'true' figure is less than half the original headline figure, it is still ten times what a normal Nashville house consumes. That, by my reckoning, still makes Al Gore a BIG FAT HYPOCRITE. They also take time to mention that Dick Cheney's federally funded home had an equally extraordinary electricity bill in 2001 and why isn't anyone complaining about that then? I'll tell you why: Becuase Dick Cheney isn't going around telling everyone to use less! This isn't a story about whether people use too much power in general, it's a story about whether people who want to tell everyone to use less power should perhaps set something of an example.
Anyway, I could go on for ages about how Al Gore has used every political trick in the book to represent and misrepresent the issue of global warming. It's not that I disagree with the science that does exist, but I disagree that just because there is a concensus among scientists that their current version of this theory (and there have been plenty of discarded versions in the last 30 years) is fact, let alone truth. The issue of global warming is particularly attractive to liberals and left-wing campaigners simply because energy companies are a right-wing target, owned and run by people like Dick Cheney. The attractiveness of the target has got to introduce some bias into the way the issue is pursued by these campaigners and with the (at first sight unassailable) backing of science, it gives them an almost religious desire to convince everyone that they are right. That is fine if they live what they preach, but with Gore, it's not very convincing is it? When you see him burning power like he is, you have to wonder if the global warming issue isn't just another political campaign for him... a way of getting back at the Republicans that beat him to the presidency. Really, the green movement should be just as pissed off with Gore as Gore's supporters are with the Republican thinktank that produced this story.
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