Global Warming

Edition 2 - State - Main CountrySUN 04 MAR 2007, Page 061
Time that Gore saw the light
By Andrew Bolt

Bright lights at the Oscars for Al Gore but an inconvenient truth flares over the electricity bill for his Tennessee mansion
ANY day now, global warming will change from the world's biggest scare to the world's biggest joke. That moment could have come already. On Monday, to be exact.
That's when we saw a beaming Al Gore waddle on stage to the roar of Hollywood's dream-makers to get his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth.
It should have been for the former US vice-president -- now the world's most famous global warming alarmist -- his finest hour.
Here he was, receiving Hollywood's highest honour for his smash documentary, in which he warns that within a century the seas will rise up to 6m while monster hurricanes tear through what's left of our cities.
Never mind that scientists reject such wild claims. Gore was getting the endorsement that counts -- an ovation from the diamond elite of showbiz and the media -- for preaching that only one thing could save us from the apocalypse he imagines.
Use. Less. Dirty. Power.
But at almost the very instant Gore was handed his Oscar for best documentary, The Tennessean, his home state paper, reported he'd in fact won an Oscar for hypocrisy.
Billing records of the Nashville Electric Service revealed the Gore mansion, a 20-room, eight-bathroom behemoth with a well-lit heated pool, used more electricity every month than the average American household used in a year. Use-Less Gore had so many lights burning, heaters running, computers humming and gadgets whirring that he burned up 221,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity last year, or more than 20 times the national household average.
Worse, he was using more electricity now than he did before he made An Inconvenient Truth.
And this isn't even counting all the power he uses for his other two homes, and his endless flights around the world, in private jets and civil, to flog his film.
Gore's staff, sensing a PR disaster the size of the Exxon Valdez, rushed to explain away this great oil spill.
Unfair, said spokesman Kalee Kreider. See, Gore and his wife tried to offset their ``carbon footprint'' by buying their power through the Green Power Switch program.
``They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy-efficiency measures and then they buy offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero.''
But time is also up for this kind of easy virtue. Let's work through those three common excuses.
So Gore has low-energy light bulbs.
And he still uses all this power? My god.
So Gore uses the green power program.
But isn't that green power just an add-on to the Nashville Energy Service's main source of base-load power -- gassy coal-fired power plants?
And so we get to Gore's final excuse, the get-out-of-jail card of so many of our warming prophets of doom, from Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery to that Jeremiah of the airport lounge, David Suzuki: Gore buys carbon offsets.
That actually means he pays other folk to use less dirty power themselves, or take out the carbon dioxide he pumps out. It's a bit like paying someone to starve so you can gorge.
But there are at least four problems with such offsets, the first of which is very particular to Gore. He buys his offsets through Generation Investment Management, whose chairman is . . . Al Gore.
The second problem with his offsets is that if global warming really is going to fry us to hell, shouldn't Gore cut emissions, rather just be carbon-neutral?
Third problem is that even green groups now doubt many carbon offsets actually work.
And, last, there's a moral problem. Offsets are best suited for people rich enough to afford them.
Of course, one hypocrite like Gore shouldn't discredit an entire cause. Yet it can't be an accident that global warming attracts more hypocrites than most faiths.
There's Flannery, criss-crossing the world by jet to tell us to use less oil.
There's British PM Tony Blair lecturing Britons to cut their emissions, but declaring it ``unreasonable'' to expect him to stop flying off on his overseas holidays.
And Prince Charles booking out a jet's first and economy class to fly to New York to accept a green award from Gore.
So what is the moral in this carnival of hypocrisy?
It's that global warming is an apocalyptic faith whose preachers demand sacrifices of others they find far too painful for themselves.
It's a faith whose prophets can demand we close coal mines but who won't turn off their pool lights. Who demand the masses lose their cars, while they keep their planes.
While Gore's lights burn brightly, for you the darkness is coming.
Join Andrew on blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt
Caption: HOT TOPIC: The home of former US vice-president Al Gore, which reportedly uses 20 times more power than the average household; Al Gore
Illus: Photo
Column: Sunday Extra
Section: FEATURES
Type: Feature