Al Gore, a hypocrite? The hell you say!

**Jackalope** · 03-01-07, 03:50 AM

Critics question how green Gore really is

February 27, 2007
By ANNE PAINE
The (Nashville) Tennessean

NASHVILLE — Former Vice President Al Gore, whose film about his efforts to combat global warming won an Academy Award, is being called a hypocrite by a Tennessee group that says his 10,000-square-foot home is consuming too much energy.

The home’s average monthly electric bill last year was just under $1,200, according to bills that the Tennessean acquired from Nashville Electric Service.

“For someone in his position not to take steps to reduce his own energy consumption is disingenuous,” said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free-market think tank.

“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,” Johnson said.

Gore’s power bill shows, however, that the former vice president may be doing just that.

Gore purchased 108 blocks of “green power” for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills.

That’s a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources.

The green power Gore purchased is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans or 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on NES’s Web site.

“An Inconvenient Truth,” the movie about Gore’s global warming battle, details how greenhouse gases are trapping heat next to Earth, causing a changing climate with melting ice caps and more violent storms.

NES gets its electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Most is produced from coal, which emits carbon, a greenhouse gas. A lesser amount comes from nuclear power and a small amount from hydroelectric.

The Green Power Switch program isn’t all that Gore and his wife, Tipper, are doing, said Kalee Krider, a spokeswoman for Gore.

They use compact fluorescent lightbulbs and are in the midst of a renovation project that includes having solar panels installed on their home to reduce fossil fuel consumption, she said.

Their car? A Lexis hybrid SUV.

“They, of course, also do the carbon emissions offset,” she said.

That means figuring out how much carbon is emitted from home power use, and vehicle and plane travel, then paying for projects that will offset that with use of renewable energy, such as solar power.

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe, she said.

Johnson, whose group usually focuses on government spending issues, said he “doesn’t differ much from Al Gore on his environmental concerns.”

“We went into this just asking the question, ’Is the leader of the environmental movement basically living up to his word?’ ”

What they found is someone whose home uses as much power in a month as an average family would use in a year, he said.

In addition to the electric bill, the natural gas bill for Gore’s home and guesthouse ran $1,080 per month last year, Johnson said.

On the Web:
www.tennesseepolicy.org, Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
www.tennessean.com, the Tennessean.

**BEB** · 03-01-07, 05:58 AM

If he pays his bill what should we care? (libertarian in me)

Really.

(GOP in me has to say more)

Just because the touchy feely politically correct news outlets don't report on it doesn't mean others must.

It's an easy target, but does a guy using a lot of utilities conflict with your politics? No? Then leave it alone. I know it's an easy target, but you only end up targeting yourself.

**KaiGywer** · 03-01-07, 07:52 AM

Without getting political in this. He is a rich man and former VP. He's not gonna live in a shack. Obviously it costs more to heat and cool a huge house than a studio apartment.

**Jackalope** · 03-01-07, 01:14 PM

The point is, he's telling everyone else how to live when he doesn't live that way himself. I'm all for people spending their own money however they want to spend it. But he accuses the rest of us of destroying the planet (which is a damn lie anyway) while his one house sucks up as much electricity as 20 normal houses.