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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/20/INGCGKJSB61.DTL&hw=al+gore&sn=001&sc=1000

Gore talks the talk, but ...
Global warming guru hardly lives a carbon-neutral lifestyle
Peter Schweizer

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the Web site for his film, "An Inconvenient Truth." "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics Pictures, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents. But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted recently, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC Web site applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas. Living carbon-free apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock-free. Nor does it necessarily mean forgoing a mining royalty, either.

Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore received $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operated a zinc concession on his property at least until late 2003. Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork.

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth, and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy." A version of this piece appeared in USA Today. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

Evergreen forests, including temperate and tropical rain forests, are net consumers of CO2. The largest remaining stands of evergreen forests are in Canada, Russia, the United States and Brazil. In any rational CO2 control regime, those countries should receive incentives to adopt policies that would lead to the retention and expansion of evergreen forests. Such a policy was considered and rejected during the drafting of the Kyoto Protocal. Countries without evergreen forests outvoted countries with them. Instead Kyoto focused only on CO2 production, excluded much of the world (including the two fastest growing economies in the world) and proposed reductions in CO2 essentially only from Western Europe and North America that, if achieved (and even the western countries that have ratified Kyoto are failing to meet their obligations under it) would have no significant impact on global warming.

If Kyoto does not reduce global warming, then unless the people who prepared it are idiots (which presumably they are not) it must then serve a different purpose, and that purpose is wealth redistribution. Much like the Law of the Sea Treaty and recently proposed limits on nanotechnology research and production, Kyoto would result in transfers of wealth from the West to "developing" countries without any demonstrable benefit to anyone other than those in control of the developing countries and the NGO's that would mediate the transfer of wealth.