While Al Gore was recently off jetting to Oslo to smarmily lobby on his own behalf for the Nobel Peace Prize – a kind of jury tampering, I might add – I was in Nashville. One afternoon while touring the posh Belle Meade neighborhood, my guide pointed out Tipper and Al’s 10,000 square foot mansion. That’s about the size of a three-story dormitory at one the fancy boarding schools Al attended before Harvard.
I asked my tour guide if he knew how much energy the Gores were using while Al preached conservation to everyone on the planet while consuming tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel on the way to speaking engagements for his hefty fees. Apparently I was not the first to ponder the Gore hypocrisy. According to reports in the Nashville press, the couple shelled out about $30,000 in energy bills last year. That’s about 12 times more than the average home. Or put another way, the Gores use more energy in a single month in that one mansion than most of us use in a year. And we actually live in our houses.
The Gore PR machine spins a dizzying tale about how the mansion is something called “carbon neutral.” I hear the same PR firm sells bridges in Brooklyn and San Francisco. I think that means the Gores pay some illegal aliens – at arm’s length, of course – to plant tree seedlings in a national park. Or maybe tobacco farming qualifies as a carbon-reducing activity. With all Al Gore’s profligate energy consumption, he maintains that he makes a small “carbon footprint” in the tender planet.
In his own mind, and in the minds of Hollywood, Gore is a kind of messiah with a new gospel. In his propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, he claims that the debate about global warming is over. When did it ever begin? Earnestly and honestly?
During Gore’s speaking engagements at colleges and universities, the ground rules are clear: No one may challenge his premise. He will not take questions from scientists or experts who dare counter his data, methods or conclusions – regardless of credentials. Now the Oscar-winning (gasp) film is shown in schools as fact, as science, as indisputable. What can we expect in a culture that accepts Michael Moore as a historian? The backbone of science is constant scrutiny, constant peer review and criticism, constant evaluation. But Al Gore’s international road show is as controlled and scripted as a Clinton town meeting. And anyone who diverts from the playbook is deemed in the same class as Holocaust deniers.
But I have to thank Al Gore for one thing: If he didn’t invent the internet for us, this Blog could not exist.
