Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Former Vice President Al Gore's environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth collected the Oscar for best documentary Sunday night at the Academy Awards, and he's increasingly being touted as a possible late-but-formidable entry in the Democratic presidential primary race if Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama stumble. But back home in Nashville some are questioning whether Gore is an environmental hypocrite. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research took a look at Gore's utilities usage for his 10,000-square-foot mansion and found that the Gore home uses more than 20 times the electricity of the average American household.

According to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research:

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES). In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home. The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh - more than 20 times the national average. Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh - guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year.

But Nashville blogger and former state Senate candidate Bob Krumm, who lives not far from Gore's big white house, says there is another ex-senator living in a Nashville mansion that shows more concern for the environment. That would be Bill Frist, the former Republican Majority Leader whose big West Nashville mansion "was newly renovated to include a closed loop geothermal field in order to take advantage of the non-polluting, renewable, and clean source of heating and cooling that is contained deep within the earth."

Some folks talk the talk... others walk the walk.

Gore's Nashville mansion cost a cool $2.3 million, by the way. They Gore's also own their family farm 40 miles east of Nashville, and a large home in Arlington, Va. No word on the total combined energy usage of all three homes - or the total carbon emissions of the jet fuel and gasoline burned carrying the Gores between all three.

Updates: The story went national via Drudge, so there are plenty of people talking about the Gore mansion's energy usage today.Wizbang has a great post on the subject. Also, Gore has responded to the criticism. His staff says his big house uses "green power" and he has installed solar panels, compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy-saving technology in his mansion - and that Gore buys "carbon offsets" to "offset the family's carbon footprint."

Ed Morrissey is unimpressed:

Gore wants the rest of us to downsize and conserve rather than just treat energy like any other market — and Gore is obviously not doing that for himself.  He may retort that he purchases carbon waivers that help fund efforts to clean the environment and reduce global warming to balance his large energy usage. I’d respond: so? The point that the global-warming alarmists make is that we have to stop releasing carbons in order to reverse the “crisis”, as they called it over and over again, not to create a rations market that acts like a parasite to the energy market. If the situation is as dire as Gore painted it in An Inconvenient Truth and at the Oscars last night, then one might expect a little more self-discipline from the chief alarmist disciple.

Purchasing offsets only means that Gore doesn’t want to make the same kind of sacrifices that he’s asking other families to make. He’s using a modern form of indulgences in order to avoid doing the penance that global-warming activism demands of others. It means that the very rich can continue to suck up energy and raise the price and the demand for electricity and natural gas, while families struggle with their energy costs and face increasing government regulation and taxation. It’s a regressive plan that Gore’s supporters would decry if the same kind of scheme were applied to a national sales tax, for instance.

And basically, it doesn’t address the issue of hypocrisy. If Gore and his family continue to increase their consumption of commercial energy with all of the resources they have at hand, then they have no business lecturing the rest of us on conservation and down-scaling our own use.

Morrissey is right - "carbon offsets" are no different than the "indulgences" that the pre-Reformation Catholic Church sold to wealthy members so they could continue to sin. Carbon <strike>indulgences</strike> offsets would be the centerpiece of a "cap and trade" system that would allow heavy polluters to continue to pollute heavily while enriching Wall Street, which would manage the whole "carbon offsets" financial trading system.

If every American family’s home consumed as much energy as the Gore mansion and every American family paid for “indulgences” to continue to consume carbon-based energy, as Gore does, it would leave less energy, green or otherwise, for the developing world to consume. Gore wants to continue using mammoth amounts of energy but create a system of laws and regulations that prevent most Americans from doing the same. That is why he looks like a hypocrite.

Update: The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville looks at the issue of Gore’s energy usage and reveals something rather interesting:

Gore's home may get some power from solar panels and may use enviro-friendly compact flourescent bulbs but the bulk of the home's power comes from Nashville Electric Service, which gets its power from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which produces most of its power from coal-burning power plants. Which means most of the power being consumed at the Gore mansion comes from carbon-emitting power sources. But … Gore buys those "carbon offsets," right? Well…

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe…

Translation: Gore isn't just buying carbon offsets - he’s buying them through his own investment firm, perfectly demonstrating how the rich will get richer via "cap and trade" by posing as friends of the earth. Gore uses polluting energy and then "punishes" himself by investing in his own green-energy investment fund. No wonder Gore says he doesn't want to run for president - he's making green by posing green.