i take into consideration that he ran for president to change things and you can't do that while living in a hut. here is my calculation: divide consumption by the amount of reduction due to this person's activity. THIS is the figure you are interested in, if this is to be a rationale argument. if GW is a real threat i DEMAND that powerful people, which inevitably consume above average energy, go out and speak. if GW is real and Al Gore's activity reduces CO2 by 2% i do not care at all if he contributed by 0.00001%. only hypocrites would do.
i think it is really strange to compare a powerful, influential person, who has a big house and travels a lot, with the average american idiot driving a 5liter idiotic engine. in all the debate this "Al Gore flies, has a big house and so forth" is utterly superficial. does not add anything to the debate. and besides, you can accuse him of many things, but in my eyes he is no hypocrite.
While no one would know it by most of my posts I was once an environmental lawyer who volunteered my time. Out of all the environmentalists I met, only one ever passed the -- I believe it and I live it test in my book. One man who worked for save the planet type clauses actually lived as low an impact life as could be reasonably expected. I respect him immensely. He had old clothes, took the bus everywhere and when he inherited money he gave half to fund causes and half to unicef. If you really care about the environment you need to change it one life at a time and you should start with your own.
Im going to buy a Hummer....then I will buy a used Toyota Corolla that gets 35 MPG and then I can say: Im getting 8 mpg's with the Hummer but due to the Toyota, Im actually helping the environment to the tune of 27 MPGs!!!!
You really don't get it, do you? Maybe it's a european thing. Over here, we expect a certain minimal level of pretense that our politicians observe their own principles.
AAA: >You really don't get it, do you? Maybe it's a european >thing. Over here, we expect a certain minimal level of >pretense that our politicians observe their own principles. Don't believe him Man ... But oh how I wish that were true. JB
"Over here, we expect ..." no, sorry, that is tooo funny. hard to resist the tempation to put that "Over here" in proper perspective ... happens rarely in a debate that someone shoots down his/her own line of argument in such an obvious way. thnx for sharing, AAAintheOverhere!
i completely agree from a moral point of view. but hear this argument. how much influence could that man in his old cloth gain? be invited and listened to by the entire political community? getting elected for high political ranks? and if it was in your and my vital interest that he gets heard (just assume for a moment), wouldn't you prefer he reaches as far as possible? actually wouldn't you get him new clothes and a reputation that makes him representative? the answer is an inevitable yes. though you are very right in your criticism, but it is more critical towards how society works today. and again you are right when you argue that you can only change society by starting at yourself. but in this case it might be that we lack time ... but there is one other point. as i understood gore it is necessary that we change the direction of our development but we do not have to give up everything. i think that his message would actually be worse received if he lived in a hut and people would feel they had to do the same.
What a bunch of Crap....Wtf??? Why can't you tree huggers just take a deep breath of globally warmed air and say: " God Damn that Al Gore!!!" ??? If you really and truly believe all the GW crap that you spew, you should be PISSED the Gore is running a couple houses and a couple thousand dollars a month in electric....why is it so hard for the GW/tree Huggers to say : Al Gore let us down????........unless, of course, all this GW/Tree hugging stuff is really not the issue??????? could it be nothing more then a liberal front?????