Caution: Lefty Wingnuttia Ahead

(The pic is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but not the rest of this post.)

Of all the writers I thought I’d ever have to give “the treatment” to here, I never expected Paul Campos to be one of them. However, it is necessary, alas; this appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times today.

Al Gore told a Senate committee last week that we're facing a planetary crisis because we're putting too much carbon into the atmosphere. Sen. James Inhofe responded by inviting Gore to pledge to use no more energy than the average American.

Why exactly would Gore think Inhofe is doing anything except trying to set him up here (to be fair, Campos acknowledges this)? And what the hell does Inhofe know about how “the average American” lives?

It's been reported the Gore family mansion uses more electricity in a month than the typical American family uses in a year. Furthermore, Gore often flies in a private jet, which any serious environmentalist must concede is one of the most inefficient uses of energy imaginable.

Gee, I suppose Gore flies in a private jet because he has a busy schedule promoting the movie and other speaking engagements.

With this criticism in mind, here are Gore’s affiliations and activities (from this Wikipedia article), and somehow I have a feeling that this list is incomplete…

Today, Gore is president of the American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., and an unofficial adviser to Google's senior management. He lectures widely on the topic of global warming, which he calls "the climate crisis."[2] In 2006, he starred in the Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, discussing global warming and the environment.[3] Gore has a contract to write a new book, The Assault on Reason, to be published May 22, 2007. While he has stated that he has no intention of running for President again, it is frequently speculated that he is a potential candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

(Regarding the last item, I sincerely hope Gore decides not to run again. It’s not that I don’t think he would be great, especially considering the life forms currently residing in the White House, but in addition to making it harder for John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both are fine candidates, and we don’t need Al “riding in on a white horse” diluting the field even more and making it easier for Rudy and the Repugs.)

I would imagine that Gore would be hard-pressed to keep up a schedule like this flying commercial all the time, and the message he’s communicating is one that I don’t think should be constrained by a requirement such as the one advocated by Campos (yes, it’s a bit of an inconsistency, but if flying commercial means that Gore has to cut back on speaking engagements and promotions to alert everyone to this issue, who wins in that scenario?).

And another thing…I’m tired of reading these stories about the sizes of the homes of Al Gore and John Edwards. They assume that our other past and current elected officials live like paupers. I can’t think of a word to describe that kind of delusional thinking.

Well then, do you know what I want to see? A report on the sizes of the homes of all of our elected politicians, both Dem and Repug, as well as anyone running for public office or anyone appointed to government or serving in the Bush Administration. I have a feeling that THAT would be an eye-opener, and it would shut up all of those people screaming about Gore and Edwards’ living accommodations right quick.

Gore refused Inhofe's invitation, and pointed out that he and his wife live what he calls a "carbon-neutral" lifestyle, by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere."

That Inhofe is an aggressively ignorant demagogue (he claims global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people") who was trying to embarrass Gore with a cheap publicity stunt shouldn't obscure the fact that the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma has a point.

Gore's response is, in a word, lame. If humanity faces a genuine crisis because we're emitting too much carbon, this is largely because people in developed economies use enormous amounts of energy (the average American uses 18 times as much energy as the average Indian).

That statement completely ignores the reality that India, and especially China, are both trying to consolidate oil reserves all over the world to ensure their continued economic success, as described in this article.

And if the average American's energy use is extraordinarily high by cross-cultural standards, rich Americans live a lifestyle that is off the charts in terms of environmentally destructive self-indulgence. Buying "carbon offsets," as Gore does, is equivalent to paying a poor kid to take your place in the military when your nation faces a troop shortage in time of war.

There is more than an element of truth in that statement, I’ll admit.

This Wikipedia article provides background on purchasing carbon offsets, and to me it sounds similar to these so-called “cap and trade” schemes by companies trying to purchase “credits” from other companies that use energy efficiently so they can continue to use energy badly (kind of like the lazy kid who doesn’t study cheating off the science whiz when it comes time to take the test).

Carbon offsets are literally better than nothing and a step in the right direction, which is one reason why they’re being pursued by the John Edwards campaign, by the way.

And this is a bit of an aside, but I want to mention it because it does pertain to efficient energy use; about a year or so ago, Sir Ian McKellen appeared on “Real Time With Bill Maher” and he mentioned that he’d installed solar panels on the roof of a home he owned in London and used it to generate power that he sold back to his utility company, and I always wondered why more people in this country (like me) are unable to do stuff like that.

And by the way, Campos is about to make a hell of a “U-turn.”

Speaking of which, the parallels between Inhofe's criticism of Gore and the "chicken hawk" argument made by opponents of the Iraq war are striking. Consider the hypothetical case of an Iraq war supporter who we'll call "Jonah." Jonah posts lots of things on the Internet in which he argues that the Iraq war is the central front in the war on terror, and that the war on terror is a fight for America's survival.

When critics point out that our military has had to lower admission standards in order to meet recruiting quotas, and that Jonah himself is a healthy man of military age, Jonah replies that he's contributing to the global war on terror in his own fashion, by posting pro-war arguments on the Internet, attaching a yellow ribbon magnet to his car, and so forth.

This response is just as lame as Gore's, and in exactly the same way. If you claim we're facing a huge crisis that requires great personal sacrifice on everyone's part, but refuse to make any real sacrifice yourself, then your attempts to obscure the latter fact through empty symbolic gestures deserve to be mocked.

How can Campos seriously suggest that Gore has not made some kind of a personal sacrifice on this? He’s doing everything he can possibly do to alert us to the fact that we have to do something about global warming, but instead of resulting in action, his fine work inevitably results in an attack from some so-called expert or hack “columnist” representing one foundation or another with ties to General Motors, Exxon Mobil or other conservative interests in which he has to prove the same arguments over and over and over and over and over…

If it appears that Gore isn’t making a sacrifice (though he is), that may be the reason why (and though I certainly don’t consider Campos a hack columnist, he’s doing absolutely nothing to help with this issue by trying to "kill the messenger").

And by the way, I wonder how Campos came up with the name of “Jonah”?

It's obvious what Al and Jonah should each do, given their respective beliefs: Al should radically simplify his lifestyle, and Jonah should join the military.

Yet each of them could also do something that would, in its own way, be almost as impressive: simply confess his hypocrisy and weakness, and implore others to behave differently.

Imagine if Gore were to say, "Yes, I live in a deeply self-indulgent, utterly wasteful fashion. People like me are a very big part of the problem. I'd like to change, but I'm weak. For the sake of our planet, you need to be a stronger person than I've been."

Imagine if Jonah were to say, "Yes, I'm a hypocritical coward, who values his own skin more than America's survival. And our nation won't survive if it's made up of people like me. For everyone's sake, you need to be more courageous than I've been."

Now those would be inconvenient truths.

And I wonder how much energy Campos himself used to slime Gore like this instead of explaining what we all could do to combat the climate crisis?

And by the way, Happy 59th on Saturday, Al!