Quote:
Originally Posted by Bend it like Bourgeois
I was ready to agree, but it's a tough call.
If (and I mean if, not all will agree) Al Gore is a self serving hypocrite presenting things in a misleading way to make a point, that's ok. But if he's attacked in the same way it's not?
I dunno. I'm happy to throw the wingnuts out on both sides and find the fuzzy middle, but maybe the question is whether or not Gore's one of the wingnuts.
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Well, FWIW, I'm satisfied that he's not. Perhaps he should get "off the grid" as some have suggested. But if he did, he'd be a crank, performing an intervention that, because it's only available to the super-rich, isn't practical as a strategy for others.
What he has done is minimize his own CO2 output--and done it in a way that if you wanted, you could replicate. One way to look at it is that he's setting an example.
I think what people are really feeling has more to do with the size of his house--but here's the thing. Your local supermarket spends three or four times that in its monthly electricity bill. I'd suspect that you also don't want to look at the bill for a hockey rink in a warm climate. He happens to be rich--he's also making an effort to minimize his own impact on global warming, in a way that less rich people can emulate, if they want to. Socially, that's in many ways much more valuable, IMO.
Besides, it is important that this message was concocted in a misleading way by a right wing think tank. Because Gore's message was never "I'm great, I'm better than all of you"--it was "we need to work together to solve this problem." The real hypocrites are the policy eggheads who concocted this attack in the first place. Few people are arguing that Gore has "presented things in a misleading way." If they are, I haven't heard a persuasive argument, or seen a shred of evidence to substantiate that claim. This is the last-ditch effort of people who realize that on the merits--on the facts--they've lost this argument. Now they're trying to change the subject.
And in a way, it's worked. We're all talking about Gore's house instead of the problem of global warming. Which is more important?