Posted by Mike O on: 06.19.2008 /
I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about this week, and then I heard this story on the radio yesterday. Apparently, the night after Al Gore won an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” last year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research released a report stating that Gore’s home “uses more than 20 times the national average” and other rather provocative statements like this one:
Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year”
Whenever statements like that get thrown about, I like to check them out at snopes.com, so I went there and apparently, it’s true.
In his defense, a spokesperson for the Gores said at that time,
both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home and 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.
That was February, 2007.
On Tuesday, an update was released showing his energy usage a year later, and found that his energy usage has actually increased by 10% rather than being reduced.
Admittedly, the article I linked to is politically conservative. Nevertheless, if the numbers they’re revealing are true (I’ve not looked into it myself - I only just heard about it and decided to write this), shouldn’t Al, who won a Nobel Prize and made millions of dollors for his “Inconvenient Truth,” be doing the thing for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize? Shouldn’t a leader in the global warming movement, who is profiting from the global warming movement, practice what he preaches?
Just a thought.
Leave a Reply
Comment by: Jason
1 06/19/08 9:04 AM | Comment Link |Even if it isn’t true he should be making efforts to live “green”. I’d expect the champion of the green issues to at least have photovoltaic cells to convert light to electricity and heat for his home. I know that it would cost me a mere £1600 (about $3000) to install solar power in my home that would heat water and radiators all year round. Assuming that Mr Gore has a bigger house than me by a factor of 10 then he’d need to spend 10 times as much. Not an unfeasible expenditure for a wealthy man like him.
That’s just one step. He could recycle water at very little cost. He could insulate his home to minimise loss of energy to the environment. He could install wind power generators on his land. He could compose his waste. He could recycle metal, glass and paper.
He could be seen to do more than talk about global issues which I think is what you mean.
Having said that I know the sort of tricks that a person can do with statistics. He uses 20 times the national average for energy. How much bigger is his home? How many people live there? Does it use 20 times the energy of a business as the home is being used as a business?
Comment by: Mike O
2 06/19/08 10:18 AM | Comment Link |Yes, I agree. Which is why I went to snopes for at least an approximation of the truth.
To me, the issue isn’t how much he uses, or for what he chooses to use it. To me the issue is that his usage increased in the year following his prominence in the global warming issue.
I’m not into the politics of envy which would say that he has more, therefore he should have less. Not at all. But if his message is one of reducing, he should at least do that - even if his numbers end up being 100 times greater than my own, I’d be fine with that if he was “walking the talk.”
And maybe he is - I don’t know. It just doesn’t look like it.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
3 06/19/08 10:40 AM | Comment Link |None of this says much. Gore and his wife still work out of their home. I don’t see any figures about how many staff there are in his home - nothing about what exactly gets done there etc etc.
Just saying “Gore’s home uses so much power” means nothing until you find out what exactly he is doing there given that it is an office as well. Given that it is being used as an office as well, has anyone compared the energy usage to that of an office building?
Also consider this. Since my wife and I both work, my total energy usage on weekdays is minimal. Other than 1-2 hours in the morning and another 4-5 hours in the evening, the only electricity consumption in my home on weekdays is the refrigerator. A home that is also in use as an office is consuming electricity from morning to night.
Not to say that Gore is the perfect messenger. However, let us make meaningful comparisons and just because he is an imperfect messenger, let us not ignore the message.
Raghu
Comment by: Raghu Mani
4 06/19/08 10:45 AM | Comment Link |For all you know, he has gotten a lot more efficient in his energy usage but the amount of work being done in his home-office has, say, doubled. If that is the case, the 10 percent extra energy consumption does not look bad at all.
I think it is a mistake to come to conclusions without enough data. However, given all the fuss that Gore is making about global warming, I think he could be a little more proactive in spelling out what he is doing in his house and what are the efficiencies he has gained from his energy-saving measures.
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
5 06/19/08 11:05 AM | Comment Link |Thanks, Raghu. I agree that we don’t know what’s behind the numbers. Like I said, I heard the story yesterday, did some minimal research to corroborate it, and went with it. It seemed like it would be a topic of interest to this audience.
Personally, my suspicions run a little less hopeful than yours, but that’s just me. You’re right, we don’t really know anything.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
6 06/19/08 1:44 PM | Comment Link |Talking of Al Gore’s house, here is an article with a little more information. It seems to say quite the opposite of what the other article was saying. Among other things it says that the house is using solar panels, a rainwater collection system and geothermal heating. It also says that the house has been given a “Gold” rating by the Green Building Council.
In the end, just plain numbers mean very little. What really matters is how efficient you are with the energy you use - and to determine efficiency, looking at monthly bills is not enough. What you need to look at include the size of the building, how it is being used, the number of people occupying the building at different times in the day etc.
I’m not being very pro-Gore here nor am I taking some kind of optimistic view of things. I just don’t want to come to conclusions till all the relevant facts are known.
Raghu
Comment by: Jason
7 06/19/08 3:20 PM | Comment Link |Damn those evil statisticians!
Actually Mike, I think you’ve raised an important point here. Namely that it isn’t enough to talk about something, you actually have to act on what you talk about, to walk the walk. I also think that in the media savvy and skeptical world we live in you have to be seen to do so.
I’m sure that you have a biblical connection here but the idea of doing what you say always reminds me of leaders like Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. They held (or hold) simple ideas that they backed with everything that they had. As much as I like Al Gore’s message I don’t see that in him. I see a lot though, just not that.
Comment by: Pseudonym
8 06/19/08 5:47 PM | Comment Link |One thing that’s also been completely left out of the discussion is that Gore buys offsets for all of the carbon that he expends. So in that sense, his house is carbon-neutral.
Comment by: Mike O
9 06/19/08 8:10 PM | Comment Link |Not really. There’s the angle of throwing the ‘hypocrite’ label at people when we don’t really know the story behind the story (like I did). But no biblical angle - just an interesting news item.
Comment by: Mike O
10 06/19/08 8:13 PM | Comment Link |Thanks, Raghu. That article provides good balance. There’s always two sides to an issue, and I think it’s important for both sides to look at both sides. We’ll still lean to one side or the other, but people should at least understand the opposing view. For me, I still wonder “why is his footprint increasing?” but your article provides some offsetting balance to that. Like so many things, it comes down to who you choose to believe more and where your personal sensibilities lie. But there’s usually good question-raising information on both sides. Considering the opposition helps keep you intellectually honest.
What does it mean to ‘buy offsets’? Isn’t he still leaving a carbon footprint? I’m not into the whole carbon footprint thing, so I’m not familiar with that terminology.
Comment by: Pseudonym
11 06/19/08 9:23 PM | Comment Link |Mike: The idea of a carbon offset is simple. For every amount of carbon you feel responsible for sending into the atmosphere, you buy stuff which has the effect of taking the same amount of carbon out of the atmosphere.
Some of the sorts of the things which you might fund include:
- Planting trees.
- Investing in renewable energy businesses.
- Controlled burning of land rather than letting a wild fire through (since wild fires tend to release more carbon than controlled burns).
And so on. Yes, you still send carbon into the atmosphere, but you also try to take some out to compensate.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
12 06/19/08 11:00 PM | Comment Link |Mike,
The way I see it, only one side has been presented here. The article you posted just quoted a bunch of numbers without any context. The MSNBC article provided at least some context. The Wikipedia page on Al Gore provides more context. Please also note the Gold certification by the Green Building Council. That does mean that the home is among the most efficient in the country.
But the biggest piece of context the Gore bashers keep omitting is that this isn’t just a home - it is a home office out of which Gore runs his NGO. He has staff, a commercial-sized kitchen for entertaining and complicated security arrangements (since he is an ex vice-president). This isn’t your typical house. Why then is it being compared to an average home?
There is also a ton of omission in the Gore-bashing article. The electricity bill is quoted for the period from June 2007 to June 2008. Note that for much of this time there was construction going on - it wasn’t completed until December 2007. Of course December 2007 is the start of winter which is when solar panels are least effective (not to mention that the solar panels were taken off-line for a while starting in August). Did the Gore-bashers say anything about his gas bills? Nope they didn’t. Turns out that thanks to the geothermal system he had installed, his gas bills are down 90 percent. Finally, Gore’s house was being worked on for 6 months - from June 2007 through December 2007. Don’t you think that all that construction work would itself consume a lot of electricity?
The more you look at the article you quoted, the more you see all the distortions and omissions. The article is nothing short of a hatchet job done to make Gore look bad. A classic case of trying to shoot the messenger in the hope that the message will go away.
Raghu
Comment by: joe
13 06/20/08 4:04 AM | Comment Link |What Gore does or doesn’t do is largely irrelevant. He is certainly a hypocrite, just like the rest of us. The truth is that unless all of us - including the Gores, the Turners and every other wasteful family living above their fair share in the world - shape up, we’re going to trash the world for everyone. Bashing Gore is only really bashing myself.
And Carbon Offsetting is total nonsense. On a fundamental level, it is true that a tree takes up as much carbon in it’s lifetime as is produced when you burn it. But we’re not talking about the amounts over the lifetime of a tree. We need to take up the carbon in the time it takes to burn the wood - which is minutes not months or years. Extrapolate that to fossil fuels, which are the equivalent of burning many trees in a much shorter period of time, and you see how this offsetting is total nonsense.
It is a sticking plaster to allow people to continue life as normal, when the truth is that we cannot continue life as normal. More about why carbon offsetting is rubbish here, conclusions which are largely shared by the British government.
Comment by: Stephan
14 06/20/08 6:49 AM | Comment Link |I believe Gore is being internally consistent. He is an old school big government liberal (and I say that with my own liberal tendencies) who believes that individual actions do not matter nearly as much as government actions. They believe the government should be accountable rather than individuals. It’s like someone driving 80 mph (128 kph, Jason) and advocating that the speed limit be lowered to 55 mph (88 kph). He’s still obeying the law while asking that it be changed. You and I might call it hypocrisy, but it’s internally consistent with the big government philosophy.
Like Joe I don’t buy the carbon offsetting thing. It’s like saying, “It’s OK that I killed three people, because I have three kids! It’s still a zero sum equation, right?”
Comment by: Jason
15 06/20/08 9:52 AM | Comment Link |Stephan, we use mph in England. Don’t ask me why when we went metric 30 odd years ago.
On the carbon offset idea I agree that it doesn’t add up but that isn’t a reason not to plant a few trees. One tree might not make a big difference but a forest might.
Comment by: Stephan
16 06/20/08 11:29 AM | Comment Link |I’m all for planting trees, but not for using it as an excuse to continue polluting. Stop polluting and plant trees. How about that, Al?
Comment by: Pseudonym
17 06/20/08 7:43 PM | Comment Link |The point, surely, is that in the modern world, you can’t completely avoid polluting. He needs a car. He can get a hybrid. That produces less carbon, but not zero. Carbon offsets are how he makes up for the rest.
It’s more like saying “it’s okay that I spent $100, because I also earned $100″.
I don’t know whether or not it “adds up”. I haven’t done the maths required to work out if he’s really removing as much carbon as he’s adding. But still, it’s a noble idea.
Incidentally, he’d be on more solid ground if the US was operating under Kyoto. Then he could make up the difference by emissions trading.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
18 06/21/08 12:47 PM | Comment Link |Raghu Manu, thanks for the information you shared. I was wondering if Al Gore might be using his house as more than a house.
Mike I don’t think any of us live up to our own ideals perfectly so, if we make any attempt to publically advocate for them share them, it’s inevitable that we’ll be seen as hypocrites to some extent.
If Gore was being unnecessarily wasteful then I would be disappointed and wonder why he is not at least making an attempt to do what he’s urging others to do.
But based on what Raghu Manu says perhaps he isn’t.
What this reminds me is that it’s best to give someone’s friends as well as their detractors a fair hearing.
I appreciate the comments about carbon offsets. I’d be surprised if they fully made up for the negative effect on the environment they’re deemed ‘equivalent’ to. But they’re still better than causing the negative effects on the environment and doing nothing to compensate.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
19 06/22/08 2:30 AM | Comment Link |This reminds me that people living in glass houses should not throw (the first) stone.
Comment by: Mike O
20 06/22/08 6:51 AM | Comment Link |We *all* live in glass houses.
Comment by: Jason
21 06/22/08 7:42 AM | Comment Link |Only some of my house is glass. I like to look out of the window or the conservatory at the birds singing in the garden and the cats trying to catch them.
I think the point is that when we know we are doing something wrong we should take every reasonable effort to stop and reverse the harm that we do. I think the key point is that our efforts should be reasonable. I don’t find it hypocritical that someone drives to work with a “save the planet” sticker in their window. If they worked across the street from their house I would.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
22 06/22/08 10:47 AM | Comment Link |When it comes to global warming/climate change everyone is living in a glass house. Gore is far from the perfect messenger - all that I have showed above is that he isn’t nearly as bad as the right-wingers make him out to be. However, if we require that the messenger be perfect before we listen to the message then the message is never going to get delivered!!
Raghu
Comment by: Randy
23 06/25/08 10:02 PM | Comment Link |Raghu,
This sounds suspiciously like what Christians say about evangelism. ;-)
Comment by: Raghu Mani
24 06/25/08 10:33 PM | Comment Link |Heh :-) Nice one!
More seriously, I don’t see anything wrong with criticizing the message. If you see an issue with the science behind global warming by all means attack it - instead of attacking Gore, try to find flaws in his arguments.
Attacking Gore to disprove global warming is like saying that Christianity is wrong because some evangelicals can be creeps. I don’t believe in Christianity because the arguments for it have huge logical flaws (in my view) and not because some Christians have an obnoxious way of proselytizing.
Raghu
Comment by: Randy
25 06/26/08 10:06 AM | Comment Link |Raghu,
Yeah…I crack myself up sometimes.
I think it is part of our American culture to attack people in order to defame an idea. That’s probably due to our celebrity obsession/hero worship which places value on an idea in direct relation to the celebrity status of the one saying it. Discredit the celebrity and the idea loses value. And it’s way easier to discredit a person than an idea. It requires far less intelligence and research.
Comment by: Stephan
26 06/26/08 12:26 PM | Comment Link |Unfortunately for us Christians, part of our message is that God is supposed to make us better people. That makes it hard for many non-believers to separate the person from the message. It sucks, but it’s earned.
My problem with Al Gore is not that I don’t believe in global climate change, but I don’t believe that Al Gore is really dedicated to doing what it takes to fix it. He’s not willing to change his lifestyle in a significant way, so he must not take it very seriously. As such he is a flawed spokesman.
I’m concerned that I believe his message more than he does.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
27 06/26/08 1:13 PM | Comment Link |Al Gore might well be a bad spokesman for his cause. However, I don’t see much data to support that assertion. All the stuff that we see about the house is so distorted that it is hard to come to any conclusions and it is done by people whose sole intent is to undermine the whole pro-environment movement by undermining Gore.
That said, I have no problems with people criticizing Gore if they are able to point to some reliable data. I guess the only real thing people can point at (which is what you are saying) is that he is not sacrificing enough - and that is a criticism I would support myself to a certain extent. He could live in a smaller home, he could fly coach etc. However, if you look at his website, you’ll see that he is not advocating that people make huge changes to their lifestyle.
His whole message seems to be that you can help the environment a lot without having to make big sacrifices. He expects the government to make most of the big changes and not the individual. The way I see it, what he’s doing seems quite consistent with his message. So I guess the problem, for a lot of pro-environment folks, isn’t that he is a hypocrite but rather that he isn’t enough of an alarmist on this issue.
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
28 06/26/08 2:07 PM | Comment Link |I wasn’t trying to disprove global warming when I wrote this - I just thought it might be a topic that elicited some emotion, which it did.
By the way, I just heard on the news today that global warming may result in an increase in the number of illegal aliens in America and a rise in despotic governments in the next two decades. Two decades?? OK, that’s a bit much. I understand that the heat can make people crabby, but c’mon.
Comment by: Stephan
29 06/27/08 7:00 AM | Comment Link |Yes, that was a point I made earlier. Gore is a big government liberal who expects the government to solve problems rather than having people solve problems. I disagree with this whole line of thinking, which is probably the root of my problem with Gore. I think individuals, making common sense changes in their personal lives, can make much more difference than the government can. It probably doesn’t even require that much sacrifice - it just requires change, which requires effort. And many people, including Gore, don’t seem willing to put forth the effort.