Silly us to get down on Gore for using more than 20 times the average American's consumption of energy while lecturing the rest of us about our own wastefulness. The deal is, we just can't comprehend how he's avoiding damaging the environment with his magical, lefty ways.
From Gore, via Think Progress:
1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.
2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:
It’s the latest in a series of desperate attacks by Drudge to paint Gore as a hypocrite...What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprintand try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, hethen advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bringtheir footprint down to zero.
These are the lengths that climate skeptics must go to suppress actionon global warming. There is no meaningful debate within the scientificcommunity, so the right-wing busies itself with talk about how muchelectricity Al Gore’s house uses — and even then they distort the truth.
The lengths weren't really all that great. The story pretty much writes itself when the self-proclaimed guru of global warming uses 20 times as much power as the rest of us. I mean, two times as much? I could see that. I'd probably still point out the hypocrisy, but 20 times? I'm no enviro-freak, but I turn out the lights when I leave a room and shut off the water while I brush my teeth, and it keeps my bills quite a bit more modest than Gore's $30K a year. We right-wingers can't help it if the plain facts of Gore's lifestyle make every normal person in America go, "Wait, he's lecturing me? What a jerk!"
I wonder how many "carbon offsets"-- trees I buy that other people promise to plant for me to soak up all the emissions my lifestyle creates-- I'd have to buy to take care of my $27-a-month power bill, huh? I'd hate not to be carbon-neutral, like Gore is.
Not to mention that if I can barely afford my electric bill when Ikeep my thermostat at 68 degrees in the winter and only turn on thelights at night to keep from tripping and breaking my neck when I getup to take a piss, how am I supposed to afford "carbon offsets"?Via Hot Air, which has video from Hannity & Colmes about Gore's outlandish consumption.
It'sgreat that he's using solar panels and all that, but notice he's notdisputing how huge his electric bill still is. What the hell is hedoing in there? Is he a Terminator from the future and requiresconstant recharging? (That would explain pretty much everything.)
It seems one can only save the environment these days if he has enough extra money to spend on making up for his own consumption. I can't believe lefties would exclude so much of America from this great crusade based on their income. It's disgraceful. Well, I guess all the poor folks could just have their power cut off, period. If all of us who can't buy carbon offsets did that, in the dead of winter or summer, we'd shortly offset ourselves, if you know what I'm sayin'. Problem solved.
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