Gore Fights Back. Feebly.

Apparently, the press release I noted in this post got Al Gore’s attention. He responded to the blog Think Progress who characterizes Drudge’s headline as an “attack” and a “smear”.

Here, first, is Drudge’s headline: “POWER: GORE MANSION USES 20X AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD; CONSUMPTION INCREASE AFTER ‘TRUTH’”

I’m sorry, folks, but you’re really bending the definition of “attack” and smear” to apply either to this headline. Both statements are matters of fact. Gore does have a mansion. It does use twenty times the electricity of the average household. Consumption did go up after the release of his movie.

It’s a strange worldview that can characterize facts as smears and attacks.

That aside, I wanted to note Gore’s response, as given by the site.

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

That doesn’t hold water with me.

To the first point, it doesn’t matter what sort of energy-saving technology Gore’s house uses on the inside. It still ate up almost 221,000 kWh of electricity just last year. Now, it’s possible that all those energy-saving devices were installed starting in 2007, but that doesn’t really get him off the hook much at all. It simply means that all his sermonizing before January 2007 was hypocrisy. I’d find it hard to believe, though, that Gore only started reducing his home’s carbon footprint two months ago.

To the second point, let me just say that we here on the right understand carbon offsets. Those of us who have some interest in history might remember them from a few hundred years ago as indulgences. They are a pretty slick way for someone with a ton of money to continue to enjoy their expansive lifestyles by buying off their polluting activities. The problem is that carbon offsets aren’t necessarily what they’re cracked up to be. You have to take particular care to make sure that the offsets you buy are actually going to produce carbon-neutral energy over the long-term. Given that Gore didn’t seem to pay enough attention to his house to make sure it wasn’t hemorrhaging CO2 at a ludicrous rate, one wonders if he’s paying attention to what his money is buying. They’re also not something that a lot of American can afford. That’s especially true if you happen to believe the Democrats’ portrayal of American as a land where the shrinking middle class can’t afford health care and is falling farther and farther behind every day. In fact, lecturing average Americans to simply buy their way out of the problem really does smack of imperiousness. How dare the rabble criticize the Goracle? Why, don’t we know that we can simply wave our checkbooks at the problem and it’ll go away?

Here is the bottom line. Gore got caught blowing up his little corner of Planet Earth and all he has is a minion-spouted accusation of a “smear” and the suggestion that we plunk down some cash to buy an indulgence. That’s not a response. It’s a cop-out.

UPDATE: Oh, this can’t be good. According to a 2001 column in the Chicago Tribune, President George Bush’s ranch in Texas is pretty darned environmentally-friendly. From the description of the technology used inside the ranch, it’s probably fair to say that George Bush is America’s first “green” President. Not that he’ll get credit for it or anything.

Says The Anchoress: “I can’t say it enough: if the big boys of Global Warming aren’t really taking the issue seriously…if they find it so unserious as to allow the issue to be used as a political wedge or a rabble-rousing sound-bite, and that’s all…well, then I don’t have to take it seriously, either.”

Mozactly!

UPDATE 2: Sister Toldjah makes an interesting point: “As a side note, it’s interesting that Think Progress chose to attack Drudge for republishing a press release from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, rather than responding directly to the TCPR itself. Perhaps because they couldn’t?”

Yeah, odd, isn’t it. It’s almost as if they’d much rather attack the messenger than the message…