March 04, 2007

Conspicuous Consumption

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From IBD Editorials: Lifestyles Of The Rich, Famous.

Gore, driven by a narcissistic compulsion to save the planet, has been nagging Americans about energy conservation for years. Drive a smaller car or, even better, buy a hybrid. Live in a more modest house. Put on a sweater, as Jimmy Carter suggested, and keep that home cooler in the winter.

Does John Edwards, who lives in this enormous house in North Carolina, know what it is like to be "struggling to get by?"

Don't turn the air conditioner up so high in the summer. Replace those incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones. Go green even if it hurts.
These aren't so much tokens of good advice as they are commandments from on high.

So how does Gore live? Like the privileged leaders of the Soviet ruling party who led lives that were far more comfortable than those of the peasants they ruled.

When he isn't hectoring Americans about their lifestyles or basking in the praise of Hollywood stars who burn large quantities of fossil fuel to preach energy use in all corners of the world, Gore luxuriates in a grand dacha that has 20 rooms and a pool house. And it's an energy vacuum.

From ABC News: Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth'? -- A $30,000 Utility Bill.

Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore's environmental hypocrisy.

Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday [Feb. 26] that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. ...

[The Gore] family tries to offset [their] carbon footprint by purchasing their power through the local Green Power Switch program — electricity generated through renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas, which create less waste and pollution.

Iowahawk has more: Repent, Sinners! Earn Eco-Salvation the Quick and Easy Iowahawk Way.

This cartoon is based on an idea by Hollie at Hollie is Right (hat tip Rich Chandler).

Posted by Forkum at March 4, 2007 03:40 PM
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