The inconvenience of listening to both Left and Right complain about who’s using how much of their carbon footprint and gloating about it makes me want eat Cup O’Pizza from a Styrofoam cup while driving around my Prius – PB/TK
Al Gore’s Carbon Footprint Doesn’t Matter – By Emily Atkin / Aug 7 2017
Al Gore is back in the spotlight with his new documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel, making him a top target again of the right-wing counter-intel complex. On Thursday, the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research released report, “Al Gore’s Inconvenient Reality,” that paints the former vice president as a hypocritical climate advocate. In near-creepy detail, author Drew Johnson maps Gore’s home in Nashville, Tennessee, down to the number of windows, and concludes that “Gore’s own home electricity use has hypocritically increased to more than 21 times the national average this past year with no sign of slowing down.” Johnson also slams Gore’s numerous attempts to modernize his home through energy efficiency, solar panels, and geothermal heating, saying they have been inadequate in offsetting his energy use.
“No matter how the numbers are viewed, Al Gore uses vastly more electricity at his home than the average American-a particularly inconvenient truth given his hypocritical calls for all Americans to reduce their home energy use,” Johnson writes. “Al Gore has attained a near-mythical status for his frenzied efforts to propagandize global warming. At the same time, Gore has done little to prove his commitment to the cause in his own life.” The report was a smash hit on the right. In less than 24 hours of its publication, it was picked up by Fox News, The Daily Mail, The Washington Times, The Washington Free Beacon, and The Daily Caller – which, in case there was any doubt about NCPPR’s political motivations, allowed Johnson a guest column so he could declare that Gore’s hypocritical home energy use and ‘do as I say not as I do’ lifestyle has plunged to embarrassing new depths.
Gore’s team disputes NCPPR’s claims – just as they did in 2007, when Johnson put out a similar report attacking Gore’s personal energy use following the success of his first documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. “Climate deniers, funded by the fossil fuel industry, continue to wage misleading personal attacks on Al Gore as a way of trying to cast doubt on established climate science and distract attention from the most serious global threat we face,” Gore’s communications director, Betsy McManus, told me in an email. She didn’t dispute Johnson’s claims of Gore’s energy use, rather his assertion that Gore has been ineffective at getting as much of his energy consumption as possible from renewable sources. “Vice President Gore leads a carbon neutral life by purchasing green energy, reducing carbon impacts and offsetting any emissions that cannot be avoided, all within the constraints of an economy that still relies too heavily on dirty fossil fuels,” McManus said
Continue to newreupblic.com article: https://newrepublic.com/article/144199/al-gores-carbon-footprint-doesnt-matter
