Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar the other night so you just know the Neo Conservatives are going to be digging around for something to discredit both it and him. The best they could come up with, however, was to get hold of Al’s electric bill where they noticed he was using a lot of electricity:
A day after receiving Oscar glory for a documentary on global warming, former Vice President Al Gore was called a hypocrite by a Tennessee group saying his Belle Meade home is using too much energy.
The home’s average month electric bill topped $1,359, according to the group.
“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk (the) walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
That does seem like a lot of money spent on electricity by someone who’s a champion of environmentalism. There’s just one little problem with this stunning revelation:
Electric bills obtained by The Tennessean, however, showed that Gore is paying a premium on his bills to be part of the “green power” program. Gore purchased 108 blocks of “green power” for at least each of the last three months, according to a summary of bills from Nashville Electric Service.
That’s a total of $432 a month spent to pay extra for solar or other renewable energy sources. NES power – outside this program - is derived largely from coal, which emits carbon, a green house gas.
The green power purchased by Gore in those three months is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans, or recycling 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on the utility’s Web site.
Oops.
The article goes on to state that the Gore’s make use of compact fluorescent bulbs in their lamps, drive a hybrid SUV, and are in the middle of renovating their 10,000 square foot home to make it even more green by installing things such as solar panels. Seems like Gore is walking the walk and the Tennessee Center for Policy Research should do a bit more research before jumping up and down calling Gore a hypocrite.
(in some people’s views) When the child does something good like getting a good test score it’s because of good parenting, but when they misbehave it’s because the child is wrong. I dislike the idea that parents take pride in what their children achieve, because (though they may have supported) it’s not the parent’s who earnt it, and it should work equally in the negative
It really would have paid off, politically, if Gore had the electric company install a separate electric meter for the offices in his home. It’s really a pretty big facility for his organization with a staff that comes in to work there.
I shudder to think what the electricity use of my workplace would be.