Al Gore: Only the poor need to conserve
In the wake of recent right-wing allegations that Al Gore uses approximately 10 times the national average for energy in the home, the former Vice President has been challenged to cut back on that number, to practice what he preaches, as it were. Gore’s response to this challenge has been to decline to participate, since he claims that much of the additional energy he uses has been purchased at a premium, as it was generated by clean sources such as wind power and solar panels.
In fact, while the attempt to get Gore to consume what everyone else does was clearly partisan, when it was raised by Republican Senator James Inhofe (R.-Okla.) during yesterday’s hearings in Washington on the future of the environment, Gore’s response is equally, if not more, frightening. After all, Gore’s recent film Inconvenient Truth ends with the line ‘Are you ready to change your way of life, are you ready to change the way you live?’ Yet, when confronted with the fact that he, too, might need to make a change, Gore’s response is to indicate that he is guilt-free, since he is financially able to buy himself all the extra clean energy he needs. In other words, he doesn’t need to change, because he can afford to be wasteful in an environmentally tasteful way. The Republican pundits out there aren’t holding back, of course, accusing Gore of being a hypocrite. And, while it may be a case of thousands of pots calling thousands of kettles ‘black,’ that still doesn’t negate the fact that, in this case, Gore is being a total hypocrite.
I own my own home. I pay the heating and electric bills. I don’t make a ton of money, so as much as I would like to have a plethora of solar panels to provide me with guilt- and cost-free electricity, I don’t really have the $20,000 necessary to install such a system. Perhaps Mr. Gore would like to finance me, interest-free? I honestly don’t see that happening, though, so I guess I’m forced to practice what he preaches, more so to save money than the environment, even if he’s not. Nice to know you really care, Al.
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