LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.
HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.
HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house contains 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on an arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.
HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as “the Texas White House,” it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON’T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it’s truly “an inconvenient truth".
mrs. shrub is big on native plants in her crawford garden... hasn't stopped mr. shrub on selling off every bit of pristine habitat that he can to commercial exploiters.
I believe the Chicago Tribune originally printed an article about this titled: Bush Loves Ecology - At Home on April 29th, 2001 by Rob Sullivan. I'd post the link but you have to pay for the transcript.
Not that I'm a huge fan of George Bush, but it would be quite amusing for him to call Gore a hypocrit, since that's what he is, at least on this issue.
I have zero, and I mean Z - E - R - O respect for Al Gore given how he's used this message to make himself very wealthy while never once practicing what he preaches.
Still, 99.9% of the Gore followers will forgive him, excuse it because he touts his carbon offsets, or say his message is soooo important, etc.
What makes a difference is when people quit preaching and actually get out there and do something. Here's at least one kudo to George Bush.
and gore's house is in nashville, not outside of it. it's in the center of belle meade which is one of the nation's most expensive zip codes in cost per square footage.
if what you say is true about the crawford ranch, then yes it is gentler on the environment. no questions asked.
but in no way shape or form does that qualify bush for being an 'environmentalist' as you said in your opening paragraph.
if someone buys recycled paper but throws it away, they are not an environmentalists...they just happened to buy recycled paper.
I thought they were saying that Gore is the environmentalist, but you can't tell from his house, not that Bush is an environmentalist. Maybe I read it wrong.
When I read the original article years ago they didn't say anything about Bush being an environmentalist. Actually they slammed his policies being pro big business and quantifying that into increased pollution, etc. However they did talk about his Crawford house and said it's a model sustainable home and eco-friendly, saying he only cares about that in his own back yard. Which is a valid statement and open to discussion.
Bush also privately attends an Episcopal church near the White House that's very liberal regarding gay rights, and has a large number of gays and lesbians active in the congregation. But that hasn't stopped him from exploiting hatred toward LGBT people to further his own political career.
Politicians are hypocrites, and GWB in particular is a lying sack of shit... News at 11.
"The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor, he said with that Tennessee drawl. "If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."
intervene .. with more cowbell
"A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they'll ask one of two questions," Gore told the panels. "Either they will ask what in God's name were they doing? Didn't they see the evidence."
"Or ... they may look back, and they'll say, 'How did they find the uncommon courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy and do what some said was impossible?'"
there's a third question, mr gore. 'why were our parents and grandparents so easily swayed to extreme conclusions?' and another: 'weren't they aware of a long history of temperature variation and a history of end of the world
alarmism from every generation that preceded them? '
Senator James Inhofe challenged Gore to consume no more energy at home than the average American.
Gore retorted: "We live a carbon-neutral life, senator, and both of my businesses are carbon-neutral... we do not contribute to the problem that I am joining with others to solve."
how does being rich enough to buy carbon offsets (from your own company) make it okay to be an energy hog?
isn't al's house drawing 'green energy'...even though it's still
drawing a lot of energy.. it's taken from renewable sources..?
i find gore to be a bit of a blow hard as well..but i think some
of his points are valid..and has been said it would be nice if
mr.bush took his ideas on his ranch and put them into practice
in his administration.
Hey, I never said Bush is flawless, but I'm always amazed at the partisan hatred people have for the president these days, from either major party. My own leanings are completely 3rd party and I have no love for either republicans or democrats. Both are equally worthless, hypocritical, "lying sacks of shit," as you say.
Then again I'm not against giving credit when credit is deserved. I totally applaud Bush on his home for following an eco-friendly program. Then again, because of this I'm accused of thinking the president is infallable because I give him credit on one little thing. At very least accused of politicizing this.
Ok aquapura, I was a bit harsh. You never did say that Bush was perfect.
I don't have "partisan" hatred for Bush, it's flat-out human hatred. I know it's a cliche, but I'm a good judge of character. Within the broad generalization that all politicians are lying sacks of self-serving shit, there are degrees. And I can't look at Bush without honestly feeling sick to my stomach: I think he's the lowest of the low, I see no empathy for his fellow man in any of his words or actions. I see nothing but seflishness and thirst for power. I rarely even talk about him, in these forums or anywhere else, because of my intense desire to not feel the way I feel when i concisouly acknowledge his existence.
I don't believe the Bush family ever set out to make the Crawford ranch an "eco friendly" house. They built it, most likely, in the way that buildingd in rural areas make the most sense. Only in today's set of circumstances do we look at rain cisterns and local well digging for water supply as being "eco"; they used to be standard practice.
Which still doesn't excuse Gore's house. But also doesn't make Bush into someone who is trying to secure his place in history by continually striving to live in a way that makes people reach for higher goals.
my mother's 2nd husband lived on a farm that had no running water. a hand-pump in the kitchen, a wood stove (to cook and heat the bath water i shit you not), and an outhouse were ALL the comfort there was. how much more neutral can you get than THAT? i lived there awhile. was ok, i guess, but certainly taught me to be sceptical about things luddite-itudinal.
Wuz much much better when he sorta normalfied his place and put in a ceptic system, cistern and the rest. basically what Bush has. And what lots of farms have. hell there are farms that have been making there own electricity with wind since the 1930's. When you live on a farm you really HAVE to be self-reliant as much as possible.
Still, the point about being locally energy neutral is not so powerful as it might seem, because the overall impact is so small compared to what the people in question can actually do. The impact of the current president's laws and policies is i think much larger than his storage tank is offsetting.
on other hand the fact that gore is buying carbon offsets to make up for his huge energy wasting is humorous. especially since he says he has been worrying about the environment for what, like 30 years? And it is only NOW that he begins to think about doing something with his own lifestyle...too funny.
And don't forget that as President, Bush is in the unique position to set energy policy for the world's largest producer of greenhouse gasses. Come on, who cares if his house is "green." He could do so much more than Al Gore could hope to steer this country in the right direction. And LB and others are right...this description could be every texas ranch house.
Bush is a public figure, why can his public life reflect his supposedly "green" private life? Republicans thought they should drag the last President's private life to light, now we see that they can't reconcile their own. Losers.
lesss see, bush flies on a private 747 with a second plane always at the ready (and a fighter escort). He also has a second house that is 55,000 ft² big, with 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 bullet proof windows, 8 fireplaces, 8 staircases, 3 elevators, 5 full-time chefs, a tennis court, bowling alley, movie theater, jogging track, swimming pool, and putting green. then there is the car he drives, opps, gets driven around in a motorcade with a minimum of 35 vehicles, most of them so heavily armored that they use gallons per mile. And he doesn't even bother to buy (or get the tax payers to buy) renewable energy credits or carbon offsets for his comfort and well being.
I'd rather vote for a honest green party candidate then any hypocrite from a major party. Hopefully the next president will appoint gore to be our climate czar and then we can drop this discussion.
i'd be interested to see when gore actually purchased his house in belle meade. perhaps its not the best example of a sustainable lifestyle, but if one is inclined to live in downtown nashville, it is certainly FAR more sustainable to move into an existing, albeit energy guzzling mansion, than to tear it down and build a new perfectly green one. or just build a new, regular sized house, just about anywhere.
still, i don't think its reasonable to criticize bush for flying around on a 747 or living in the white house. when you're the "leader of the free world", even if you are an arrogant barely literate jackass, it isn't really exactly feasible to take the bus all over and live in an igloo.
the original entry is nothing more than a ridiculous and pointless means of character assassination--using the exact same "argument" republican flat-earthers like Sen. James Inhofe have been trying to use to take apart the scientific consensus that global warming is real and cause by human industrialization--not bovine methane and volcanoes.
it's been mentioned above that al gore's house consumes energy from renewable sources, so there's no basis for that as a grounds for argument--
for all i care, al gore could burn crude oil, natural gas, and coal on his property until time stops--what he has done with 'an inconvenient truth' and acts like yesterday's testimony before the senate, he has done more to raise awareness and lay a groundwork for awareness and massive change to combat the ecological crisis we have made for ourselves.
the bush admin. and their republican tools in congress have been responsible for more environmental destruction through cuddling up to their big oil pals, trying to open the arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drilling, the perfectly misnamed "clean skies act" or whatever the hell they called it, and allowing the worst corporate polluters to police themselves, among other irresponsible policies that even consider "clean coal" to be a viable energy alternative. who gives a damn how efficient his (or al gore's) own house is.
treekiller- I dont think al gore would have refused living in the white house nor would he have turned the white house green so this comparison is a joke.
this set of circumstances does bother me, but i don't know what that means.
i mean, sure, it's great that bush does at home what this particular group of conversants wish we might do and wish mr gore might do, but bush's personal values don't seem to be reflected in his public policy. if he believes that a less-bad lifestyle is a personal responsibility issue and not one that he should project onto others (a belief which would be consistent with conservative thinking), there's no conflict, but it's a good illustration of why that thinking is flawed - what he's doing personally is unlikely to have any real impact unless others join in.
and gore should make efforts to make his lifestyle consistent with his proselytizing.
does it change what i think about either one? not much. just makes you wonder what people really think about themselves and the messages they're projecting, intentionally or unintentionally.
ha! i'd hate to be hanging hanging by my thumbs until one of those comes along. from what i've seen so far the green candidates are just as big "lying sacks of self-serving shit" as the rest of them. after all, nader is the one who duped so many into believing there would be no difference between bush and gore. i think the last 6 years have proven what a con that was.
Gore has been rich his entire life. His agenda for anything he's done was not to make money.
If you want a true comparison, show me his house and another in a comparable area. I pay a lot more than my parents for utilities, water, etc., and my place is half the size of theirs, does that make my place environmentally worse?
Nope, my place is more environementally sound (newer, better windows, etc.), but I live in a city, they live in a rural town.
there is a subtle thread of irony and sarcasm in my posts as always. Considering that in the last election cycle, the green party candidate for governor of mn was arrested for embezzlement- there are no honest politicians. thanks to the supreme court, we'll never know if gore would have replaced the carter's solar panels.
I just heard on treehugger that if we had invested the cost of the iraq war into renewable energy, we'd now have the infrastructure to replace 150% of all the energy consumed in the US... Guess war is never sustainable, except for the desperate politicians who's failing careers are propped up a little longer.
NIXIETUBE - i might be wrong about this but i am pretty sure that gore has owned his house for over 15 years. i was told that he had this house in nashville during his entire time as vp because he wanted to retire in it. i tried to do research on the web but i couldnt find the date of purchase of the house.
i dont care if bush has pv panels on his ass: his policies and personality are disgusting. the messages that he has spread as frat boy in chief are more destructive than gore's energy guzzling low-rent tara, by a long shot, my dear. it does begin at home, kiddies, but the enormous path of destruction left by this texas twister makes me wonder what the hell he learned at home. despite gore's southern bellicose abode, he has learned from its impact and is willing to at least spread a message regarding change.
Gore has been rich his entire life. His agenda for anything he's done was not to make money.
no, just the opposite. gore's agenda is all about making money for himself. inconvenient
he invests in what he believes in (carbon offsets) and stands to make huge, huge piles cash if he can con the government into mandating carbon offset programs.
If I stood to make huge, huge sums of cash by curing cancer, should I not pursue it because the whole enterprise would stink of my desire for personal gain?
the messages that he has spread as frat boy in chief are more destructive than gore's energy guzzling low-rent tara, by a long shot, my dear. not without, this is the best sentence I've heard in awhile. Well done.
yes, if you found the cure for cancer you should make tons of money.
al gore, however, is trying to 'cure' natural climatic cycles and guilt us into paying for it by saying this is a 'moral' issue. he exaggerates scientific predictions to convince people that new york city will be under 20 feet of water before we know it.
(slightly off topic) did you see the daily show last night? watch the welcome back, hotter bit regarding gore's 'the planet has a fever ..' statement. good times
Whether the actual predictions for NYC being under 20 feet of water are true or not, I think a general attitude that 'living lightly' on the earth is the only possible way to continue to, in fact, live on the earth is the more important issue, and yes I believe it is a moral one.
It's not Gore's exact message I agree with (and I don't disagree that there are some scare tactics being used, by both sides), it's a general attitude that we need to be smart and employ long-term thinking in our approach to the world and our culture within it.
I missed Daily Show last night. Thanks for the link.
texas is stronger than any insult any west/east coast liberal can throw at it...
ok: for some comments:
1. w is a methodist, not an episcopalian, though both denominations are theologically and socially to w's left
2. climate change has been happening since climate started -- debating it is like debating gravity
3. it is the trajectory of that change and its effect that is debatable. yes, it's debatable. because: the future hasn't happened yet. the signs point one way, but we've all heard that 30 years ago we were debating global cooling, so things are debatable.
4. you could deduce this from al gore's arguments: if the world wasn't getting hotter, if the ice caps weren't melting, etc then it would be ok to pollute and waste natural resources.
5. whereas i and many like me believe that it is like unto a moral fault to waste anything: fuel, money, time, anything. driving a suburban 40 miles to a mcmansion in the exurbs so that you can water your st augustine until the aquifer dries up is, in some theological viewpoints, a sin: you're defiling god's creation. doesn't matter what the end effect is, it's the action itself that is wrong.
6. if THAT was al gore's argument, he might sell more movie tix in flyover country. of course, if w believed that, we wouldn't have a budget deficit. that knife cuts both ways, admitted.
Two houses: An Inconvenient Truth
LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.
HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.
HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house contains 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on an arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.
HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as “the Texas White House,” it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON’T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it’s truly “an inconvenient truth".
sheri24, i admire you, you've really put your paw into the beehive on this one -- and the bees are gonna come out
I didn't know the Crawford ranch was "Green." That's pretty cool. Go Texas!
sources?
Actually, this story has been all over the news. About two months ago. Yawn.
I didn't know the Crawford ranch was green either... I think I have a little newfound respect for W.
Wait, its gone...
yeah, we've already covered this.Here, on Thread Central, and a number of other places.
It's also already been publicized that Gore is renovating his house to include renewable energy, etc.
If you're going to come out guns blazing, please do a little bit of research first.
mrs. shrub is big on native plants in her crawford garden... hasn't stopped mr. shrub on selling off every bit of pristine habitat that he can to commercial exploiters.
I believe the Chicago Tribune originally printed an article about this titled: Bush Loves Ecology - At Home on April 29th, 2001 by Rob Sullivan. I'd post the link but you have to pay for the transcript.
Not that I'm a huge fan of George Bush, but it would be quite amusing for him to call Gore a hypocrit, since that's what he is, at least on this issue.
I have zero, and I mean Z - E - R - O respect for Al Gore given how he's used this message to make himself very wealthy while never once practicing what he preaches.
Still, 99.9% of the Gore followers will forgive him, excuse it because he touts his carbon offsets, or say his message is soooo important, etc.
What makes a difference is when people quit preaching and actually get out there and do something. Here's at least one kudo to George Bush.
and gore's house is in nashville, not outside of it. it's in the center of belle meade which is one of the nation's most expensive zip codes in cost per square footage.
if what you say is true about the crawford ranch, then yes it is gentler on the environment. no questions asked.
but in no way shape or form does that qualify bush for being an 'environmentalist' as you said in your opening paragraph.
if someone buys recycled paper but throws it away, they are not an environmentalists...they just happened to buy recycled paper.
I thought they were saying that Gore is the environmentalist, but you can't tell from his house, not that Bush is an environmentalist. Maybe I read it wrong.
What makes a difference is when people quit preaching and actually get out there and do something. Here's at least one kudo to George Bush.
And what exactly has GW Bush done in terms of "getting out there and doing something" to work towards a sustainable future?
Look, Gore's house is a disaster. And due to public opinion or his own ethics he apparently has set about doing something to make it better.
I'm not unquestioningly "forgiving" Gore, but this silly "two house" argument is a total straw man.
also "gentler on the environment" doesn't (necessaryily) equal benificial for the environment so, no, you can't call it a "model eco friendly house"
When I read the original article years ago they didn't say anything about Bush being an environmentalist. Actually they slammed his policies being pro big business and quantifying that into increased pollution, etc. However they did talk about his Crawford house and said it's a model sustainable home and eco-friendly, saying he only cares about that in his own back yard. Which is a valid statement and open to discussion.
Don forget the eco friendly texas ranch is made from reclaimed materials
That does look like it once was a beautiful building. How sad.
this is a repost of propoganda email, or at least a revision of one.
I've seen it before.
Bush also privately attends an Episcopal church near the White House that's very liberal regarding gay rights, and has a large number of gays and lesbians active in the congregation. But that hasn't stopped him from exploiting hatred toward LGBT people to further his own political career.
Politicians are hypocrites, and GWB in particular is a lying sack of shit... News at 11.
intervene .. with more cowbell
"A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they'll ask one of two questions," Gore told the panels. "Either they will ask what in God's name were they doing? Didn't they see the evidence."
"Or ... they may look back, and they'll say, 'How did they find the uncommon courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy and do what some said was impossible?'"
there's a third question, mr gore. 'why were our parents and grandparents so easily swayed to extreme conclusions?' and another: 'weren't they aware of a long history of temperature variation and a history of end of the world alarmism from every generation that preceded them? '
Gore retorted: "We live a carbon-neutral life, senator, and both of my businesses are carbon-neutral... we do not contribute to the problem that I am joining with others to solve."
how does being rich enough to buy carbon offsets (from your own company) make it okay to be an energy hog?
isn't al's house drawing 'green energy'...even though it's still
drawing a lot of energy.. it's taken from renewable sources..?
i find gore to be a bit of a blow hard as well..but i think some
of his points are valid..and has been said it would be nice if
mr.bush took his ideas on his ranch and put them into practice
in his administration.
i don't get the whole terrapass thing, sounds like something a politician would do.
Hey, I never said Bush is flawless, but I'm always amazed at the partisan hatred people have for the president these days, from either major party. My own leanings are completely 3rd party and I have no love for either republicans or democrats. Both are equally worthless, hypocritical, "lying sacks of shit," as you say.
Then again I'm not against giving credit when credit is deserved. I totally applaud Bush on his home for following an eco-friendly program. Then again, because of this I'm accused of thinking the president is infallable because I give him credit on one little thing. At very least accused of politicizing this.
Archinect groupthink in 3..2..
help save the world. commit suicide tonight!!!
Ok aquapura, I was a bit harsh. You never did say that Bush was perfect.
I don't have "partisan" hatred for Bush, it's flat-out human hatred. I know it's a cliche, but I'm a good judge of character. Within the broad generalization that all politicians are lying sacks of self-serving shit, there are degrees. And I can't look at Bush without honestly feeling sick to my stomach: I think he's the lowest of the low, I see no empathy for his fellow man in any of his words or actions. I see nothing but seflishness and thirst for power. I rarely even talk about him, in these forums or anywhere else, because of my intense desire to not feel the way I feel when i concisouly acknowledge his existence.
I don't believe the Bush family ever set out to make the Crawford ranch an "eco friendly" house. They built it, most likely, in the way that buildingd in rural areas make the most sense. Only in today's set of circumstances do we look at rain cisterns and local well digging for water supply as being "eco"; they used to be standard practice.
Which still doesn't excuse Gore's house. But also doesn't make Bush into someone who is trying to secure his place in history by continually striving to live in a way that makes people reach for higher goals.
Well said, LB.
yup. pertty much what i wuz thinkin.
my mother's 2nd husband lived on a farm that had no running water. a hand-pump in the kitchen, a wood stove (to cook and heat the bath water i shit you not), and an outhouse were ALL the comfort there was. how much more neutral can you get than THAT? i lived there awhile. was ok, i guess, but certainly taught me to be sceptical about things luddite-itudinal.
Wuz much much better when he sorta normalfied his place and put in a ceptic system, cistern and the rest. basically what Bush has. And what lots of farms have. hell there are farms that have been making there own electricity with wind since the 1930's. When you live on a farm you really HAVE to be self-reliant as much as possible.
Still, the point about being locally energy neutral is not so powerful as it might seem, because the overall impact is so small compared to what the people in question can actually do. The impact of the current president's laws and policies is i think much larger than his storage tank is offsetting.
on other hand the fact that gore is buying carbon offsets to make up for his huge energy wasting is humorous. especially since he says he has been worrying about the environment for what, like 30 years? And it is only NOW that he begins to think about doing something with his own lifestyle...too funny.
And don't forget that as President, Bush is in the unique position to set energy policy for the world's largest producer of greenhouse gasses. Come on, who cares if his house is "green." He could do so much more than Al Gore could hope to steer this country in the right direction. And LB and others are right...this description could be every texas ranch house.
Bush is a public figure, why can his public life reflect his supposedly "green" private life? Republicans thought they should drag the last President's private life to light, now we see that they can't reconcile their own. Losers.
lesss see, bush flies on a private 747 with a second plane always at the ready (and a fighter escort). He also has a second house that is 55,000 ft² big, with 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 bullet proof windows, 8 fireplaces, 8 staircases, 3 elevators, 5 full-time chefs, a tennis court, bowling alley, movie theater, jogging track, swimming pool, and putting green. then there is the car he drives, opps, gets driven around in a motorcade with a minimum of 35 vehicles, most of them so heavily armored that they use gallons per mile. And he doesn't even bother to buy (or get the tax payers to buy) renewable energy credits or carbon offsets for his comfort and well being.
I'd rather vote for a honest green party candidate then any hypocrite from a major party. Hopefully the next president will appoint gore to be our climate czar and then we can drop this discussion.
i'd be interested to see when gore actually purchased his house in belle meade. perhaps its not the best example of a sustainable lifestyle, but if one is inclined to live in downtown nashville, it is certainly FAR more sustainable to move into an existing, albeit energy guzzling mansion, than to tear it down and build a new perfectly green one. or just build a new, regular sized house, just about anywhere.
still, i don't think its reasonable to criticize bush for flying around on a 747 or living in the white house. when you're the "leader of the free world", even if you are an arrogant barely literate jackass, it isn't really exactly feasible to take the bus all over and live in an igloo.
the original entry is nothing more than a ridiculous and pointless means of character assassination--using the exact same "argument" republican flat-earthers like Sen. James Inhofe have been trying to use to take apart the scientific consensus that global warming is real and cause by human industrialization--not bovine methane and volcanoes.
it's been mentioned above that al gore's house consumes energy from renewable sources, so there's no basis for that as a grounds for argument--
for all i care, al gore could burn crude oil, natural gas, and coal on his property until time stops--what he has done with 'an inconvenient truth' and acts like yesterday's testimony before the senate, he has done more to raise awareness and lay a groundwork for awareness and massive change to combat the ecological crisis we have made for ourselves.
the bush admin. and their republican tools in congress have been responsible for more environmental destruction through cuddling up to their big oil pals, trying to open the arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drilling, the perfectly misnamed "clean skies act" or whatever the hell they called it, and allowing the worst corporate polluters to police themselves, among other irresponsible policies that even consider "clean coal" to be a viable energy alternative. who gives a damn how efficient his (or al gore's) own house is.
this is ridiculous.
apologies for the rant.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/21/gore-barton/
treekiller- I dont think al gore would have refused living in the white house nor would he have turned the white house green so this comparison is a joke.
aren't you suppose to be sheri25 by now?
LOL, I should
this set of circumstances does bother me, but i don't know what that means.
i mean, sure, it's great that bush does at home what this particular group of conversants wish we might do and wish mr gore might do, but bush's personal values don't seem to be reflected in his public policy. if he believes that a less-bad lifestyle is a personal responsibility issue and not one that he should project onto others (a belief which would be consistent with conservative thinking), there's no conflict, but it's a good illustration of why that thinking is flawed - what he's doing personally is unlikely to have any real impact unless others join in.
and gore should make efforts to make his lifestyle consistent with his proselytizing.
does it change what i think about either one? not much. just makes you wonder what people really think about themselves and the messages they're projecting, intentionally or unintentionally.
an honest green party candidate???
ha! i'd hate to be hanging hanging by my thumbs until one of those comes along. from what i've seen so far the green candidates are just as big "lying sacks of self-serving shit" as the rest of them. after all, nader is the one who duped so many into believing there would be no difference between bush and gore. i think the last 6 years have proven what a con that was.
this is interesting article about zoning laws prohibiting gore from having solar panels on his house.
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070320/NEWS02/703200353/1309/MTCN04
also, here are some images of his house:
Gore has been rich his entire life. His agenda for anything he's done was not to make money.
If you want a true comparison, show me his house and another in a comparable area. I pay a lot more than my parents for utilities, water, etc., and my place is half the size of theirs, does that make my place environmentally worse?
Nope, my place is more environementally sound (newer, better windows, etc.), but I live in a city, they live in a rural town.
there is a subtle thread of irony and sarcasm in my posts as always. Considering that in the last election cycle, the green party candidate for governor of mn was arrested for embezzlement- there are no honest politicians. thanks to the supreme court, we'll never know if gore would have replaced the carter's solar panels.
I just heard on treehugger that if we had invested the cost of the iraq war into renewable energy, we'd now have the infrastructure to replace 150% of all the energy consumed in the US... Guess war is never sustainable, except for the desperate politicians who's failing careers are propped up a little longer.
Funny, cause I heard about this one from ABC & CNN.
NIXIETUBE - i might be wrong about this but i am pretty sure that gore has owned his house for over 15 years. i was told that he had this house in nashville during his entire time as vp because he wanted to retire in it. i tried to do research on the web but i couldnt find the date of purchase of the house.
i dont care if bush has pv panels on his ass: his policies and personality are disgusting. the messages that he has spread as frat boy in chief are more destructive than gore's energy guzzling low-rent tara, by a long shot, my dear. it does begin at home, kiddies, but the enormous path of destruction left by this texas twister makes me wonder what the hell he learned at home. despite gore's southern bellicose abode, he has learned from its impact and is willing to at least spread a message regarding change.
hang the rich. whether they hybrid cars or not...
no, just the opposite. gore's agenda is all about making money for himself. inconvenient
he invests in what he believes in (carbon offsets) and stands to make huge, huge piles cash if he can con the government into mandating carbon offset programs.
If I stood to make huge, huge sums of cash by curing cancer, should I not pursue it because the whole enterprise would stink of my desire for personal gain?
the messages that he has spread as frat boy in chief are more destructive than gore's energy guzzling low-rent tara, by a long shot, my dear. not without, this is the best sentence I've heard in awhile. Well done.
earth could use a major global climate disaster to correct the idiocy of humankind.
yes, if you found the cure for cancer you should make tons of money.
al gore, however, is trying to 'cure' natural climatic cycles and guilt us into paying for it by saying this is a 'moral' issue. he exaggerates scientific predictions to convince people that new york city will be under 20 feet of water before we know it.
(slightly off topic) did you see the daily show last night? watch the welcome back, hotter bit regarding gore's 'the planet has a fever ..' statement. good times
Whether the actual predictions for NYC being under 20 feet of water are true or not, I think a general attitude that 'living lightly' on the earth is the only possible way to continue to, in fact, live on the earth is the more important issue, and yes I believe it is a moral one.
It's not Gore's exact message I agree with (and I don't disagree that there are some scare tactics being used, by both sides), it's a general attitude that we need to be smart and employ long-term thinking in our approach to the world and our culture within it.
I missed Daily Show last night. Thanks for the link.
Can we PLEASE leave Texas out of this?
Please.
texas is stronger than any insult any west/east coast liberal can throw at it...
ok: for some comments:
1. w is a methodist, not an episcopalian, though both denominations are theologically and socially to w's left
2. climate change has been happening since climate started -- debating it is like debating gravity
3. it is the trajectory of that change and its effect that is debatable. yes, it's debatable. because: the future hasn't happened yet. the signs point one way, but we've all heard that 30 years ago we were debating global cooling, so things are debatable.
4. you could deduce this from al gore's arguments: if the world wasn't getting hotter, if the ice caps weren't melting, etc then it would be ok to pollute and waste natural resources.
5. whereas i and many like me believe that it is like unto a moral fault to waste anything: fuel, money, time, anything. driving a suburban 40 miles to a mcmansion in the exurbs so that you can water your st augustine until the aquifer dries up is, in some theological viewpoints, a sin: you're defiling god's creation. doesn't matter what the end effect is, it's the action itself that is wrong.
6. if THAT was al gore's argument, he might sell more movie tix in flyover country. of course, if w believed that, we wouldn't have a budget deficit. that knife cuts both ways, admitted.
Bush is officially Methodist, but he comes from a long line of Episcopalians and still occasionally attends Episcopal worship services.
(Minor point, since the Methodists are a branch of the Anglican/Episcopal tradition anyway. John Wesley lived and died an Anglican priest.)
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