An inconvenient truth: eco-warrior Al Gore's bloated gas and electricity bills


· Household consumption 20 times national average
· Supporters claim smear campaign after Oscars win

Ed Pilkington in New York
Wednesday February 28, 2007
The Guardian



Al Gore knows a thing or two about the vicissitudes of public life. Six years ago he was virtually written off as a has-been vice-president after he won the popular vote only to lose the 2000 race for the White House. On Sunday night his rehabilitation was completed as he was crowned the moral mouthpiece of Hollywood, receiving an Oscar for his global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
In front of the cream of the movie industry and the world's cameras, he stood alongside fellow eco-warrior Leonardo DiCaprio and proclaimed the ceremony the first in the Academy Awards' history to be run on "environmentally intelligent" lines. "And you know what?" he told the adoring crowd. "It's not as hard as you might think. We have a long way to go but all of us can do something in our own lives to make a difference."


Twenty four hours is a long time in green politics. By Monday night Mr Gore found himself back in that all-too familiar place - the eye of the storm.
A little-known group based in his home state, the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research, had the idea of looking up Mr Gore's energy bills for his large home in the Belle Meade area of Nashville to see whether he practised what he preached.

The headline figures, released to the group under federal freedom of information rules, were striking. Last year the Gore household consumed 221,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity - more than 20 times the national annual average.

His household consumption of energy rose between 2005 and 2006, the bills showed, from 16,200 kWh a month to 18,400 kWh last year. In addition, he spent on average $1,080 (£550) a month on natural gas. Combined, his electricity and gas bills reached almost $30,000.

The group released the information on Monday night under the title "Al Gore's personal energy use is his own inconvenient truth". Its president, Drew Johnson, told the Guardian that he had no objection to someone spending $30,000 on energy to light and heat a multimillion dollar house. "I only have a problem with that person telling us what light-bulbs to buy and that we should get a new low-energy refrigerator. That's hypocrisy, and I'm proud to have exposed it," he said.

By yesterday the news of Mr Gore's energy bills was flying around the internet at a rate which, were the web petrol-powered, would have led to instant sea level rises. Conservative and libertarian bloggers, from Instapundit to Hot Air and Red State, luxuriated over the details, while progressive and liberal blogs led by the Huffington Post tried to discredit the report by describing it as a typical smear campaign. It had been timed for the Oscars, the Post's blogger said, by a group that had no official status and had connections with rightwing groups funded by ExxonMobil.

Mr Johnson denied the oil industry link and said he had no intention of smearing Mr Gore, but had been motivated simply by a desire to hold public figures to account.

His group, which is registered as a non-profit organisation, describes itself as an independent thinktank that promotes a vision of a free society grounded in property rights, individual liberty and limited government.

By yesterday morning Mr Gore's team was pulled into the controversy. Kalee Kreider, his environmental adviser, told the Guardian that "you can attack the messenger but the message remains the same". She said Mr Gore's fuel bills failed to tell the whole picture. All the energy used for the Nashville home came from a green power provider to the Tennessee Valley that draws its energy from solar, wind-powered and methane gas supplies, among other sources.

The Gores were installing solar panels on the roof of their home, Ms Kreider added, and making efforts to reduce their energy needs. Besides, Mr Gore had adopted a "carbon neutral" life whereby any emissions for which he was personally responsible were offset by buying green credits such as parcels of forests.

"The point about vice-president Gore is that he's devoted 30 years of his life to educating people about global warming. That says something about the man," she said.

Laurie David, the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, said that the furore was only to be expected. A leading global warming campaigner, she is familiar with criticism of this kind having been called a "jetstream liberal" for using private planes. "What this lame attempt to discredit Al Gore tells me is that we are winning. This is comedy at its best - it's straight out of the David Letterman show."

Mr Gore, or the Goracle as he is now known, has so far kept out of the fray. He is flying high, his old image as Bill Clinton's wooden sidekick long since forgotten. The Washington Post has dubbed him Al Gore: rock star, and he is planning a global round of Live Earth concerts for the summer. Rumours persist that he will make a late run for the 2008 election, prompting an elaborate joke at the Oscars in which he pretended to be announcing a presidential bid only to be shooed off stage.

With all that riding in his favour, he will wish to swat away the present noise as quickly as possible. If nothing else, though, this is a reminder that in politics - even if it's green - you should never take anything for granted.

"By yesterday morning Mr Gore's team was pulled into the controversy. Kalee Kreider, his environmental adviser, told the Guardian that "you can attack the messenger but the message remains the same." - The Guardian

Tonight my wife and I saw "An Unconvient Truth." Mr. Gore made an overwhelming and compelling case and presented abundent evidence that we are going into hyper drive global warming and in my opinion the scientific community backs this up. The sheer massive amount of evidence of global warming occuring on this planet is most convincing and believable.

The disconnect that some of us are having is not with the message but that Mr. Gore is being wasteful like other Americans and by his actions is not conserving by living in a big house with enormous energy bills. Do the rest of the people in Africa pay thousands each month to heat their homes? We are being rhetorical but nevertheless why should politians and celebrities not be held to the same standard that they wish the rest of the world to live by? One does not lead from the rear of the fight but steps up and demonstrates by their actions that she or he are one and the same in solidarity with the little guys that they are trying to convince and educate to do the right thing for the future.

It's like the frog in the pot of water on the stove that is starting to heat up. The frog is lulled into feeling all right by the water temperature he is in. Eventually that frog starts to feel the water temperature getting uncomfortable. Either that frog gets out of the water or gets boiled by the conditions that exist staying where he is at.


Some of this cuurent Al Gore story definately reminds me of General Motors trying to set up and destroy Ralph Nader when he was fighting to make cars safer. We have seat belts and air bags today in cars because of Nader.



If Al Gore was here in front of me I'd tell him to make his home more energy efficient and lead by example. As it stands right now environmentally there are crazy things occuring around the globe and there are spin doctors coming out of the woodwork doing smear campaigns upon the facts and the messengers. The perception managing of issues by vested interests is working 24/7 to confuse the public. the balence of the film, "An Incovient Truth" is extremely persuasive and sound to me. I highly recommend seeing the film, "An Inconvient Truth." I predict that Al Gore will be given a Noble Peace Prize and go down in history as somebody who by their actions helped save the environment of earth.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/

Green talk but no green walk?


Al Gore is the latest green campaigner to be accused of being a hypocrite. But would the world really be better off if he'd stayed home with the lights off, asks Mark Lynas

Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian


Hands up anyone who isn't a hypocrite. Come on, own up. Who out there actually lives by every one of the principles they profess to uphold? And why has it suddenly gone so quiet? When it comes to ourselves, it seems, we are quick to realise that life is full of grey areas and being pure and virtuous is never as easy - nor even as desirable - as it might appear. That does not stop us sitting in judgment of others, however, particularly those whose message we are unwilling to hear, and who, deep down, we would dearly love to see exposed as two-faced and, well, hypocritical.

Hence Al Gore's "exposure" yesterday. "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," complained Drew Johnson of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, highlighting that Gore's mansion in Nashville uses 20 times as much energy as the average American household. Yes, the TCPR is a right-wing anti-environmental lobby group. But even so, its barbs hit home.
The reason is simple: it is hard to trust someone who says one thing and does another. When I first saw Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, several people in the audience were muttering darkly about the irony of him taking so many flights to promote a message that would require people to, er, reduce their flights. As someone who writes books and gives talks on climate change myself (both of which occasionally require me to fly), I have noticed how people often delight in pointing to the contradictions inherent in my own lifestyle. "Still jetting around the world to save us from climate change?" asked an acquaintance snidely last week.

So why this obsession with hypocrisy? The motives of the rightwing campaign against Gore are obvious: if the accusers can smear the man, then they can also undermine his message. Similar campaigns have been run against London's mayor, Ken Livingstone - arguing that he uses too many taxis, for example - in order to undermine his effectiveness as one of the only political leaders in the world to show real vision and leadership on climate change. Likewise, the charges levelled against Prince Charles for flying to the US with a large entourage to pick up an environmental award, as well as knocking McDonald's while selling high-fat Duchy Originals pasties, foster the impression that the Prince - and his green obsessions - are all a bit ridiculous.

At a deeper level, the effects of this blame game can be even more damaging. There is perhaps a "chilling effect" to the hypocrisy witch-hunt, where prominent people who might support green causes keep their mouths shut for fear of having their energy bills fished out of their bins at night by some snooping tabloid hack. Each time a potential "green hero" is shot down in flames, we all feel that little bit more cynical about politicians, leaders and society in general. Cynicism breeds selfishness and a de facto acceptance of the status quo - no cynic ever led a movement for positive change. In this sense, charging someone with hypocrisy serves to reinforce denial: "You're a hypocrite, so why should I do what you tell me?" Or the more disempowering: "If even you can't do it, how can I?" The practical outcome is that lightbulbs go unchanged, lofts uninsulated and bicycles unridden. And greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar.

This denial response is also why, on the other hand, no one likes a greenie who is not a hypocrite. Climate activists I know who do walk the walk (eschewing all flights, for example) look prim and obsessive, as if they are out of touch with the concerns and pressures faced by ordinary people. It is fine for BBC Newsnight's "ethical man" to be a tongue-in-cheek reporter, but if it is the head of Greenpeace who is totally pure and virtuous, then that is seen as just annoying.

The charge of hypocrisy against environmentalists may also be illegitimate as well as irrelevant. In my view, Gore was right to rack up thousands of air miles in his campaign to raise awareness of climate change: the political shift he has helped to engineer, particularly in America, has been truly profound, and is one of the few real causes for optimism on climate change today. If he had stayed at home in Tennessee with the lights and heating off, wearing organic woolly jumpers and feeling generally good about himself, we would have a lot further to travel in terms of awareness-raising than we do now. Being a purist may be comforting, but it is unlikely to change the world.

· Mark Lynas's latest book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, is published on March 19 by Fourth Estate, price £12.99