Al Gore’s environmental footprint

Posted on May 17, 2007
Filed Under Environment |

Al Gore is slowly becoming the champion of environmentalists with his recent campaign to educate the masses about global warming and its dire consequences on our standards of living. If you listen to him talk about reducing green house gas emission, you’d think that you have to totally give up your current lifestyle in order to save the Earth. Al Gore, however, seems to be talking the talk but not walking the walk himself. According to the Washington Post,

Former Vice President Al Gore, preacher-in-chief of the carbon-footprint gospel, himself owns a mansion which burns through more electricity in a month than the average American family uses in a year…Gas and electricity for Mr. Gore’s 20-room Nashville manse cost nearly $30,000 last year. Heating and powering the pool house alone cost Mr. Gore $544 a month. The estate’s total 2006 power consumption was almost 221,000 kilowatt-hours. The average American household uses less than 11,000.

So, is Al Gore being hypocritical or is there more to this story? It turns out that Gore is doing what other eco-evangelists are doing: He purchases carbon offset credits. What is that you ask? MoneySense magazine explains,

After engaging in activities that produce carbon dioxide-which means just about anything that consumes fuel- you buy credits from an organization that reduces carbon dioxide emissions produced elsewhere to offset the damage you have done. Some organizations plant trees, some burn off methane emissions from dumps, some retrofit buildings, and others invest in windmill farms and solar power.

There you have it. The jury is still out as to whether carbon offset credits actually work to eliminate the damage caused by your activities in the first place but at least you can hope that it has some positive effect.

If you feel like you want to follow Gore’s example then you can find a long list of carbon offset vendors here. I will simply be more careful about not releasing more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the first place; so I will walk and bike instead of driving when possible and chose public transportation over my car unless absolutely necessary. This way, I won’t have to pay the high price for gas and then pay even more to undo the damage cause by burning this fuel.

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