Gore Responds To Critics Of His Power Consumption***

Yesterday Whistler posted on an article about Al Gore’s mansion using about 20x more energy than average American home. Gore’s people have now taken the time to respond to that information, saying that Gore buys all of his power from a “green” power supplier and that he’s installing solar panels and other measures to reduce his home’s consumption of energy.

…a spokesman for Gore quickly fired back Monday night, claiming, “The Gore’s purchase all of their power through the local Green Powerswitch program — it is 100 percent renewable power.”
“In addition, they are in the midst of a renovation which includes installing solar panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power,” Gore’s spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said in a statement.

That’s great that Gore buys all of his power from renewable sources and that he’s taking the initiative to lower his power consumption. He is apparently not a hypocrite then, at least on this issue, but it does reveal a larger problem with Gore’s push to make us all comply with his green, anti-global warming doctrine.
You see, while someone like Al Gore can afford to buy all of his power from boutique alternative energy sources, your average American probably can’t. Nor can your average American likely afford to purchase the carbon credits Gore uses to justify his jetting about in private airplanes, etc. It’s all well and good for celebrities like Gore or some Hollywood type to live their lives green, but most of us simply can’t afford to do what they can do. Maybe Gore doesn’t mind his electric bill jumping by 10 or 15% if it means he uses only green power, but is that sort of a jump in expense something your average citizen can absorb? I don’t think so.
Yet that is exactly what Gore is asking us to do. He wants us to make our lives more complicated, he wants to make our household and fuel bills more expensive, all to protect against this global warming threat that is, frankly, not really all that well-defined as a threat.
But this is just how liberals operate. Celebrities and rich, left-wing politicians are fond of talking about raising taxes and making citizens sacrifice so that the government can afford to provide us with more services. After all, they’re rich. They don’t mind paying more in taxes. To them their tax bill going up 5% is of little consequence. It’s just money. But to even upper-class Americans, who make $200 – $300 thousand a year but are raising kids and saving up for college/retirement, a 5% increase in taxes is a difficult pill to swallow.
Put simply, most people on the left expect us all to pay, collectively, for their good deeds. Al Gore buys really expensive energy from boutique suppliers and expects the rest of us to do the same because he thinks its a good thing. Someone like Nancy Pelosi thinks businesses should pay their low-wage workers more because she feels that’s a good thing. Someone like John Edwards thinks we should all pay more in taxes so that we can all be enrolled in a national health care system because he thinks that would be a good thing.
What we need to ask ourselves is why we should pay more of our money to do the things Gore, Pelosi and Edwards want to do when we could keep it in our own pockets and use it to make our own lives, and the lives of our families, better?
***Update by the Whistler***
Rob those are all good points but you didn’t address the actual facts of his press release which I think sounds hollow. First of all I’m going to make my free-market disclaimer that if Algore wasn’t a hypocrite he’d have every right to do what he wants to do with his money. But he wants to force us to sacrifice while he can live as the elite he believes himself to be.
First of all the original story documents how Algore’s utility bill has climbed significantly since he released his movie. That alone is enough to show that he really doesn’t care.
He claims that he’s installing solar panels. Why has he waited until now? How much is he going to reduce his electrical consumption. I’ll bet that he’s not going to cover more than a tiny fraction of the energy that’s produced.
Algore says he only buys “clean” power. I imagine in Tennessee a lot of that power is hydroelectric. If Algore was actually cutting his consumption there would be more renewable electricity to supplant what someone else is getting from the coal plant. If Algore wants to force me to live on less than 1500 Kilowatt hours a month than he should be living on that now.
If Algore were willing to practice what he preaches he would have closed off the extra rooms in his mansion. He’d quit heating his swimming pool. He’d start living the way he wants us to live.