A critique of Gore's lifestyle by Peter Schweizer...

[Fountain79]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08...

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

The only reason that I put this on here is that I guarantee that this will become the prominent conservative talking points on this issue. How would you respond to this?


Edited for source acknowledgment.

[Poll_Blind]

1. Cherry-picking used to insinuate corruption and disingenuity.

  They would only stop this particular tack if he were to wear clothing purchased from Goodwill with barter tickets earned from raising his own chickens and collecting their eggs on his entirely-without-power shack. And then they would have an appropriately different angle of attack on that lifestyle.

  I'm not sure what useful talking points could be squeezed out of this, not that NeoCon talking points ever make all that much sense, anyway.

PB

[Cerridwen]

2. Perhaps we could change the focus from Gore to the

"family values" guys that keep getting busted for molesting children and having adulterous affairs?

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. ..

[Dora]

4. Quibble.

This isn't a USA Today editorial. It's an opinion piece by Peter Schweizer that appeared in USA Today.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

I imagine we'll see a response from Gore, and perhaps he's already addressed some of these criticisms. Part of the criticism seems to be targeted at Gore's wealth - which I think is pretty hypocritical to be coming from a Hoover fellow. Also - who gives a shit whether it's him or the film studio or the monkey that lives in my purse that's paying for "renewable energy credits."

The bit about the zinc mine was interesting, and I am curious to hear how Gore responds to that. As far as the green energy utility program is concerned, I'd like to sign up for Austin's green energy program - but they're not accepting any new subscribers. We don't know why the Gores haven't signed up - and it's not our business.

There is much we do not know - only what Schweizer (http://www.hoover.org/bios/schweizer ) has asserted in this op/ed.

[NYCGirl]

5. They can choose the truth like this:

The Gores and all the employees of Generation lead a "carbon-neutral" lifestyle, reducing their energy consumption when possible and purchasing so-called offsets available on newly emerging carbon markets. Gore says he and Tipper regularly calculate their home and business energy use - including the carbon cost of his prodigious global travel. Then he purchases offsets equal to the amount of carbon emissions they generate. Last year, for example, Gore and Tipper atoned for their estimated 1 million miles in global air travel by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project.

Carbon offsets are still an imperfect tool, favored only by a few early adopters. (An Inconvenient Truth directs viewers to a personal carbon calculator posted at www.climatecrisis.net .) Gore acknowledges that the average US consumer isn't likely to join what is, for now, essentially a voluntary taxation system. "The real answer is going to come in the marketplace," he says. "When the capitalist market system starts working for us instead of at cross-purposes, then the economy will start pushing inexorably toward lower and lower levels of pollution and higher and higher levels of efficiency. The main thing that's needed is to get the information flows right, removing the distortions and paying attention to the incentives."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore_pr.html

Or they can continue to lie about it. My guess, if they're right wing, they'll choose lying.

[silverweb]

6. A couple of things.

(1) The author's profile at the end of the article shows that his entire purpose is to discredit progressives.

(2) How do we know everything he says is true, and not distorted or fabricated to suit his purpose? Are we just going to accept that it's all true because he says so? After all, we know just how honest and forthright other "conservative" authors are, don't we?

(3) "Maybe our very existence isn't threatened." Discredit the messenger to kill the message. We've seen this game played before, haven't we?

[samsingh]

7. we know the critiquers are idiots anyway.

[RestoreGore]

8. This is a typical tactic...

By those who cannot refute the facts of the movie, so they attack Mr. Gore. Until those who continue to do this list their environmental credentials and what they are doing to be carbon neutral in their attack pieces, they are nothing more than hacks to me.


My Environmental Ambassador