Back off, Al
By Ralph Keyes Al Gore’s various proposals for reducing carbon emission includes banning incandescent light bulbs. Fie. We’ve tried fluorescent bulbs, and still use some in our porch and basement. In general, however, we don’t like them. These bulbs give off a pallid hue and don’t emit enough light for our aging eyes to read the newspaper. So we’ve gone back to incandescent bulbs. We use as few of them as possible, however, and make a point to leave our lights on only when necessary.
At any given moment we seldom have more than half-a-dozen bulbs burning. That’s because, by choice we have always lived in smallish homes. Our current house is about 15% the size of Gore’s Nashville mansion, and about 7% the size of John Edwards’s compound in Chapel Hill. Unlike them we have no second or third home of any size. Even with our disgraceful use of incandescent bulbs, therefore, we consume a tiny fraction of the carbon-emitting energy produced by these global-warming zealots.
I’m sure it makes Al Gore feel good and look good to propose that we all stop using incandescent bulbs. Presumably he and Tipper use only fluorescent in their primary, secondary, and tertiary homes. If Gore really wanted to help save the planet, however, he might consider setting a good example by moving to a smaller home that consumed less energy in the first place.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
The bulbs that Gore is advocating are five bucks or more, cost a lot of energy to make, and can’t be just thrown away but must be disposed of in the same way one would dispose of a computer. Think Americans will buy into that scheme? While his message is alarmist, his recommendations at the end of his film are quite modest (e. g. walk and ride bikes more) not likely to make much of a dent in the level of global warming he is predicting.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:14 am
I’ve great respect for Ralph, but feel compelled to complain about the “Back Off” essay. In the context of Al Gore’s total thesis, this is childish!
Everything about Gore’s recommendations is inconvenient, and some are no doubt arguable on the grounds of economic trade-off. Leaving Gore aside for the moment — and in the context of Dick’s comment above — the prevalent thinking about a “Hydrogen economy” is nonsense in the near term, at least, because it takes so much energy to get hydrogen isolated into useful form.
It’s too easy to nit-pick the details of Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”..
And by the way, I use fluorescent replacements in many places — have done so for years — and I’ve yet to replace one that has failed.
Peace!
April 6th, 2007 at 5:27 am
I don’t discount the valuable role Al Gore is playing in calling our attention to global warming and how we need to respond to it. He’s also my top choice for president. I do think that the day Gore vacates his multi-million dollar energy-hogging mansion outside Nashville (& two expensive vacation homes) to set a good example for the rest of us rather than proposing that the rest of us make lifestyle changes such as using flourescent bulbs will be the day he gets my attention.
April 6th, 2007 at 11:45 am
No doubt errors, inconsistencies and hypocrises can be found in almost any documentary. I received one message that identified 25 substantial errors in the Gore film. The British presented one a few weeks ago, done with the same high production values of the Gore film, but taking an opposing view, which was also criticized for its errors. I think it is important to raise such concerns about these films because the issue is too important to play fast and loose with the science, as both sides seem to be doing.
I’m told that Gore made about 100 million on Google stock alone. I’m sure it’s not easy with that kind of money to live as simply as his program advocates!
And what if the global warming skeptics are right? That’s the debate we should be having, because not only may the science have different interpretations, but, as Ray points out, the accommodating measures proposed may be impossible to act on.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
What impresses me the most about global warming is how it has so quickly polarized us. There are “true beleivers” on both sides and nobody really listens to the other side with anything even remotely resembling an open mind. It’s amazing how so many of us have so quickly become well educated on the matter. I have friends who are just fanatical in their viewpoint on this but it’s all simply an emotional or otherwise personal agenda with them.
It’s clear to me that we are going to create policy and pass various laws that will make the struggle of survival much harder for a lot of people, while the well-to-do will live their same wantonly wasteful lifestyle patting themselves on the back for having “bought” pollution credits.
Those same laws will create more business opportunities for those with money to exploit. Sometimes I get tired of my role as a cow.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Are the media simply being swept along by fashion? Is affirmation of global warming now considered, even by scientists, as the “politically correct” position to take?
The British position paper that was publicized affirmed the problem, if I remember correctly. The UN panel of “international scientists” affirmed the problem, as reported this evening on the Lehrer hour. Where are the scientists in opposition being reported — leaving aside “blogs” and seekers of publicity?
We should, I think, keep separate the issues of 1) Is it happening? and 2) Is it our fault?
How much we can do about it, at this point, remains an open question, I think.
April 7th, 2007 at 6:17 am
No one questions that global warming is upon us. Although there is some disagreement about its causes, the prevailing opinion is that human consumption of carbon-emitting energy sources is its primary cause. Accepting that premise for this discussion, the next question, as Raymond says, is what can we do about it. One popular approach is to take personal steps such as replacing incandescent bulbs with flourescent ones, driving a hybrid car, and even purchasing carbon offsets as Al Gore does. In my opinion this is mostly theater. The real problem, at least as far as Americans go, is that we are consuming far more than our share of the world’s resources. The heart of this problem is simple greediness. Some of our most prominent green advocates – Gore, John Edwards, Thomas Friedman – live in sumptuous, energy-hogging, incredibly expensive quarters. (Edwards’s Chapel Hill compound alone cost him $28 million.) For those who are living large that way to pop in the occasional flourescent bulb, drive a Prius, and bug the rest of us to do the same is disingenuous. In my opinion.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Things are very relative. China and Japan are doing everything in their power to consume more resources than we as quickly as possible. My small energy efficient life style is far in excess of most of the world’s. I don’t think the UDA is greedier than any other country – simply more efficient at satisfying the greed. That will be a much more leverl playing field in 30 years though.
April 8th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Agreed on all counts. Greed is hardly native to America. I just think that those who preach lifestyle change to the rest of us ought to make sure their own sumptuous houses are in order first.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
We have one of those funny twisty light bulbs (a gift from my son) and it flickers on and off so much I think I am having a stroke. So we just don’t turn it on and I walk thru that part of the house in the dark, groping my way. (Hallway, to the bathroom. I get up a lot at night)>We also are talking about draining our swimming pool in an attempt to alter the pattern of conspicuous consumption. But in the meantime we shut off the pool motor over the weekend to save energy. Sure, some green stuff begins to grow but that’s why we pay a pool guy to come every Tuesday morning. We also no longer cut the grass in the front yard. That saves something I am certain, although we haven’t owned a lawn mower since Viet Nam. I keep the top down on my Solara convertable and thus absorb and am heated by natural sunshine. Granted. my dermatologist suggests otherwise. We do other things to support the Greening of America and the Fight Against Global Warming. We use our bikes a lot, driving them to a good place for biking in our Honda Element. We have a fire in our bedroom most evenings (we have a fireplace there, by the way). It gets real hot because this is SoCal but it is in the name of a good cause. We pray for Michael Criten (Chriten?) at Richard’s suggestion. We make our sunset martinis with Bombay gin and wash the glasses in the pool to save water and plumbing bills. Finally, we talk a lot about impeaching Bush. Who knows, perhaps some day we’ll do it.
Yrs trly A concerned citizen
April 20th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Ralph: Isn’t there are sort of non-sequitur in this statement:
“One popular approach is to take personal steps such as replacing incandescent bulbs with flourescent ones, driving a hybrid car, and even purchasing carbon offsets as Al Gore does. In my opinion this is mostly theater. The real problem, at least as far as Americans go, is that we are consuming far more than our share of the world’s resources. The heart of this problem is simple greediness.”
If the “real problem” is all of us, doesn’t any solution have to come from all of us?
It isn’t just a “spit in the ocean” sort of thing that I’ve done my local driving for 13 years now (and 50,000 miles) in an electric car that is charged up from solar panels on my roof. But admittedly, the effect of this on global warming would be hard to measure!
If 10% of the two-car families in America were to do the same thing with one of their cars, now that might be calculable! And if 10% of car owners were to drive a hybrid, THAT effect might be detectable. Within five years, plug-in hybrids will bring local mileage prospects above 100 mpg. Then we might be at the threshold of something measurable.
How else are we going to address the problem except by each of us doing something?
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
(Visiting Missouri, hence my friend’s website!) Last night my friend here in Missouri rented Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and I was shocked at what I saw. While I do think Al Gore and others should be more economical in his use of the earth’s shrinking resources, and really doesn’t need a McMansion (does any frickin one of us really?), the underlying message seems crystal clear to me. That there should be two sides to an ominous environmental issue is ludicrous. Each of us must do his/her part. Maybe some people should see the movie again instead of reading negatives and picking at it. Cripes, the clear-cut rain forest land and burning forests, plus the gas emissions shown in actual photos of the polar ice caps and Antarctica and Kilimanjaro are enough in themselves to make even the most dense person see it for him/herself. It is not science fiction.
This shouldn’t be a cause, a partisan issue, an alarmist “religion” as Michael Michael Crichton put it in his blog post, “Environmentalism As Religion”, and sensible and aware people should not even need to march. The saving of our environment should be, like any good diet (not fad), a permanent adjustment in our current way of life to keep the planet breathing and running properly. Not everyone can get the figures 100% right, of course, not even Al Gore, who himself admits it and the numbers change day by day anyway. but he certainly seems to be at least 85% right which is enough for me and should be for each and everyone who are the stewards of the planet for our kids and grandkids.
I for one don’t want to see the map of the world altered drastically and billions killed. Some say, “That’s the way nature takes over when you’ve got 6.5 billion naked apes vieing for their place in every way possible.” But the evidence proves, and evidence is evidence–that there must be a change, whether we like it or not. Al Gore isn’t the only one to listen to. There are others who see it and got the figures right. But to deny it is not helping the situation. It’s our only home.