It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Green…

Just ask Al Gore…but, if you did, you might find out he’s not nearly as “green” as he’d like to have you believe.
Green, in this case, refers to how environmentally conscious he is. Gore is imploring everyone to lead a more eco-friendly life to avoid planetary disaster this decade. The problem is that Al Gore isn’t leading as green a life as he’d like everyone to believe.
USAToday.com | Editorial/Opinion | Gore isn’t quite as green as he’s led the world to believe
In an Op-Ed piece in Thursday’s USA Today, Peter Schweizer points out that Gore is using a private jet to travel cross country promoting his epic film and fictional masterpiece, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there, though.

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

First, I’d like to point out that it’s gotta be very difficult to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle considering that carbon is the FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF ALL LIVING THINGS. You and I? Yep…you guessed it. We’re carbon units just like Lt. Ilia said.
Second, who the hell is this guy to tell ME that I need to lead a more carbon-neutral existence? Is he a scientist? No. Is he an expert on climate or the atmosphere in any sense of the word? No. Al Gore is, in fact, a politician with ties to “big oil.”
Oh, yes I did.
Al Gore is tied in to “big oil” as a stock holder of Occidental Petroleum.

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn’t Gore dump his family’s large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family’s trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

I can hear the überLibs now. “But he doesn’t own the stock personally!” Perhaps not, but he is the executor of his family’s trust meaning that all financial decisions rest with him. They own Occidental Petroleum stock because Al Gore keeps it in the portfolio.
Schweizer says that it’s not a question of Gore’s hypocrisy, but it’s his credibility that is questionable. I think it’s a combination. Al Gore clearly won’t take the same actions in his own life that he suggests the rest of us take to avoid Earth’s ruin, but he also is in no position to speak with intelligence on any of these topics.
Gore is right, though. Personal sacrifice is the key. We must all learn to do without to ensure our well-being.
I choose to do without Gore’s insipid ramblings.
See? I feel better already.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com