Al Gore, Nobel Prizes, and Hypocrisy
October 21st, 2007 by ritesh
Recently, Al Gore (along with the IPCC) won the Nobel Prize for his efforts to inform the world community about the impending climate crisis. This resulted in many right-wing dingbats ramping up the rhetoric on Al Gore’s “hypocrisy”, including such feats as counting the number of airplane flights he makes each month, the number of kilowatts consumed by his Tennessee house in the summer, and a list of cars that he owns that get less than 30 miles to the gallon.
Should Al Gore make all future trips to Europe on a sailboat? Should he ride a bike to all of his speaking engagements? How about moving his family into a tiny house?
Of course he’ll never do any of the things mentioned above, but let me say something that may scare people who know me: I don’t care that much if Al Gore is a selfish pig and has a rather portly carbon footprint. In this case, the message overshadows the man.
If grandpa lights up a cigarette whilst telling you to never start smoking because it’s a filthy habit, are you going to call him a hypocrite and light up the next day?
PS: Al Gore does try a bit. He buys carbon offset credits and plants trees.
I agree, but I do believe he should set a good example and practice what he preaches.
Everyone has a certain amount of hypocrisy. How much and in what regards are what is important.
random reader, saw your link on the houston vegan meetup i just joined, and i’m a blog fanatic so i followed it, but on to my response though i see it’s almost two years late, bah, who cares…
we are adults & i think we can decipher information & decide what is true & false regardless of what the information giver does in his private life, BUT the average person doesn’t think making changes will make an impact or just doesn’t really care or just doesn’t want to take the time to do so, and i think it’s alot easier to have either of those three responses when the information giver doesn’t even abide by what he claims to believe. your true beliefs are reflected in your actions so al gore freakin’ sucks in my books for negating his words by his actions. but whatever, two years have passed, and i don’t think people are paying attention to him anymore anyway.