Al Gore's mansion: energy usage

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=2906888&page=1

Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth'? -- A $30,000 Utility bill
Think Tank Blasts Gore for Hypocrisy, Defenders Call Report a Last Gasp from Warming Skeptics
By JAKE TAPPER

Feb. 26, 2007 — - Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore's environmental hypocrisy.

Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.

"If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care," says the Center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. "But he tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules."

Scoffed a former Gore adviser in response: "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent."

Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for the Gores, did not dispute the Center's figures, taken as they were from public records. But she pointed out that both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home and she argued that "the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it."

A carbon footprint is a calculation of the CO2 fossil fuel emissions each person is responsible for, either directly because of his or her transportation and energy consumption or indirectly because of the manufacture and eventual breakdown of products he or she uses. (You can calculate your own carbon footprint on the website http://www.carbonfootprint.com/)

The vice president has done that, Kreider argues, and the family tries to offset that carbon footprint by purchasing their power through the local Green Power Switch program — electricity generated through renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas, which create less waste and pollution. "In addition, they are in the midst of installing solar panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power," Kreider added. "They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures and then they purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero."

These efforts did little to impress Johnson. "I appreciate the solar panels," he said, "but he also has natural gas lanterns in his yard, a heated pool, and an electric gate. While I appreciate that he's switching out some light bulbs, he is not living the lifestyle that he advocates."

The Center claims that Nashville Electric Services records show the Gores in 2006 averaged a monthly electricity bill of $1,359 for using 18,414 kilowatt-hours, and $1,461 per month for using 16,200 kilowatt-hours in 2005. During that time, Nashville Gas Company billed the family an average of $536 a month for the main house and $544 for the pool house in 2006, and $640 for the main house and $525 for the pool house in 2005. That averages out to be $29,268 in gas and electric bills for the Gores in 2006, $31,512 in 2005.

 

The press release from Johnson's group, an obscure conservative think tank founded by Johnson in 2004 when he was 24, was given splashy attention on the highly-trafficked Drudge Report Monday evening, and former Gore aides saw it as part of a piece, along with an Fox News Channel investigation from earlier this month of Gore's use of private planes in 2000. Last year, a seemingly amateurish Youtube video mocking the "An Inconvenient Truth" turned out to have been produced by slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client.

"Considering that he spends an overwhelming majority of his time advocating on behalf of and trying to affect change on this issue, it's not surprising that people who have a vested interest in protecting the status quo would go after him," said the former Gore aide.

Kreider says she's confident that the Gores' utility bills will decrease. "They bought an older home and they're in the process of upgrading the home," she said. "Unfortunately that means an increase in energy use in order to have an overall decrease in energy use down the road."

Gore is not the only environmentalist associated with "An Inconvenient Truth" who has come under fire for personal habits -- and not all the criticism has come from the Right.

Writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 2004, liberal writer Eric Alterman criticized producer Laurie David for her use of private Gulfstream jets. David, he wrote "reviles the owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable." New Republic writer Gregg Easterbrook followed up, computing that "one cross-country flight in a Gulfstream is the same, in terms of Persian-Gulf dependence and greenhouse-gas emissions, as if she drove a Hummer for an entire year."

In an interview in 2006, David told ABC News that she was limiting her use of private planes and was flying commercial far more frequently.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

 

I don't doubt that there's a credibility question, but that's exactly what I was referring to. Instead of the message being presented by this group, everyone seems to be more focused on the legitimacy of this group. To me, the message is more important than the messenger. It's like music...I like a song but I care not about the group which sings it.

 

JR, Alberta says it is addressing the issue. I don't know how true that is, but the province says it is addressing it. Maybe not as fast as Suzuki would like, but having it done yesterday wouldn't be as fast as Suzuki would like. Seldom is heard an encouraging word from Dr. Doom.

And the bus is certainly not a non-issue. His own spokesperson has acknowledged that a more environmentally friendly mode of transportation could easily have been found but a decision was made to go with the diesel bus because it offers more comfort and other amenities.

Not that I'm not down with the comfortability - I'm all about the comfortability - but then again I'm not publicly casting myself in the role of Enviro Man, Defender and Champion of All That Is Green. It's nice and all that he's willing to do that and has welcomed that task for as long as he has, but he leaves himself no room for questionable behaviour that could easily lead to charges of hypocrisy.

 

This is clever slamming, because the simplistic message, shouted first and without full context, takes root in the public consciousness and stays there forever, leaving little or no room for the detailed, contextual defense and explanation to find their proper place. Simple but brilliant.

 

Isn't he missing the point? He has taken extreme measures to reduce his "carbon footprint" and STILL he uses obscene amounts of energy every month.
Apparently, it doesn't matter if he's actually using a reasonable amount of energy or not.

What matters is that he TRIES and that his heart is in the right place. Once those goals are achieved, his actual performance is inconsequential.

 

Al Gore gets all the press as the environmentally conscious guy but it would roughly take everyone who has seen his movie buying more than 40 acres of wilderness apiece to equal what President Bush did when he created the world's largest protected marine area around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, an archipelago 1,400 miles long and 100 miles wide that is home to rare marine mammals, fishes and birds.

President Clinton set aside 5.9 million acres as protected land during his 8 years in office (with Gore as his VP). By invoking the 1906 National Antiquities Act - Bush created a preserve that covers the equivalent of 89.6 million acres - an ocean area larger than the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Yet Bush received no Oscar for his work.

 

He and Tipper work from home. That's an office building, with the staff I'm sure they have helping them. You'd probably be surprised by the bills of most small businesses, and if you add the home utilities of the business owner, that's probably some serious coin.

Is it more than the average American? Certainly, but this is nothing more than brilliant smear tactics.

 

Generally, one needs to make a movie first.

 

This tactic is old and tiresome. It goes back as long as I can remember to the right wingers attacking the Kennedys et al for being "limousine liberals".

If you're a wealthy politician and want to promote policies that further social justice, you're supposed to give up your earthly possessions and live in a cave; otherwise, you're a hypocrite.

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The CIA, among others, more than fairly compensated him for his dirty work. It's nice of him to give back to the country from which he took so much.

 

Do you remember the Marsh Arabs of Iraq and how Saddam Hussein destroyed the Tigris-Euphrates river and marsh systems? This is an area that covers over 59 million acres in what many believe was the Biblical area that included the Garden of Eden. The ecology of the Tigris-Euphrates river system is being restored as we speak under the Bush administration but when is the last time you heard a peep about the Marsh Arabs and their environment in the main stream media?

Al Gore gets all press for flying around the world in his private jet and giving speeches while President Bush can go about restoring the Garden of Eden and not get any credit.

59 million acres is also exactly 10-times the area that Clinton / Gore set aside for protection in their 8 years in office. Al Gore is all hat and no cattle when it comes to the environment. George Bush is the real Green Candidate.