Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth'? -- $30,000 Utility Bill

As I commented in IRC yesterday -- when this story originally surfaced -- I find this less than compelling. The presumably ironic details allow for a slam-dunk quip, but if you consider the following...

1) As an ex-vice-president and public figure who works out of his house along with his wife, certainly his electrical consumption is going to be higher than yours.

2) How high is yours? Have any idea? I don't. I bet with all these computers sitting around, mine's pretty high.

3) It's all renewable energy. I can't say the same.

4) The only real bit of irony is that he's actually doing a lot to raise public awareness of the issue. The only reason my high energy consumption isn't ironic is because I ain't doing meep about it.

Not to be a Gore cheerleader, but I think ultimately he's doing good things, and the speed and snarkiness accompanying this story's percolation through the web smacks of a lazy walmart-conservative grass-roots smear nugget.

IN YOUR FACE AL SNORE!

it must be nice to have enough money to pay more for electricity generated by renewable sources. meepgot.

Along with inventing the internet, he also seems to have invented hypocrosy

Also, Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet.

SYNTHESIZER STAB !

'During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.' - Al Gore

True, just taking credit for the success of it. Still a weeny

FWIW, I didn't find the Snopes piece particularly compelling, either.

If you do the math, Al's paying roughly $.25 per square foot, per month. That doesn't sound outrageous to me.

My home is 80% smaller than his, from which we run two businesses. We average about $.26/sq. ft/mo.

I haven't yet converted my recessed lighting to CF. I think I'll try to work that in this weekend. And maybe I don't need 3 computers running continuously...

Yeah, I don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but that claim is an odd piece of American folklore that seems to have garnered way more shelflife than it deserves.

Walt Disney's dead body being cryogenically preserved and stored under some public attraction is way cooler, for example.

Gore's a giant geek. Surely he has some important (accurate) foible we can beat him up with. I don't think this energy thing gives us much of a stick with which to do so.

Take that infamous wife mouth suck he did on the campaign trail. I still dry heave from that.

His SNL debut was the best though. He is such a geeky straight man.

Speaking of wife, she may be the real skeleton in his closet. I still remember what a shrill, demonic figure she was in my teens, her in her PMRC fervor and me in my heavy metal costume throwing devil horns for life.

Tipper was a strange bird. Got that Demonic Mary Tyler Moore / stepford thing going on. Always seemed judgemental with every interaction to me at least.

Tpper

It wouldn't surprise me to learn she was the brains behind Al Gore

Mmmm....I used to whack off all over newspaper pictures of Tipper and Terry Rakolta when I was a lad. At one point I recall contemplating sending them the resulting jizzed up pics of themselves, but thought better of it.

JUSTICE!!

What's ironic is how much energy is being wasted on trying to expose a guy for wasting energy.

You can't really waste energy.

Actually, I don't have a problem with any amount of energy he uses. But, the converse is not true. He cares intimately about how much energy I, and you, and everyone uses.

Frankly, I think energy should be more expensive, that would be better than the mess we have in Iraq. We don't have a real market for energy that should drive innovation based on pricing. Instead, we have artificially cheap energy propped up by the geopolitics we are using our military to execute. While one might argue that this is a necessary short term evil (and I am not arguing that), it is no way to price something in the long run, because it hides the full true cost. The true cost of every gallon of gas you burn, every kwatt of electricity you use is subsidized by the cost of projecting our hegemony in the Persian Gulf (and that seems to be a losing stragegy, currently). And, of course, we all know about all the intangible costs we aren't seeing accrue on balance sheets such as lost prestige, influence, and allies, etc.

We are right to change the way we spend on energy, we are wrong to have the goverment force it on people, let alone allow a priviledged elite to do so. The new aristocracy (this would include your Hollywood 'elite' as well) is a howling pack of ill-informed hypocrites and I don't want them ruling my life. So there.

i'm fairly confident al gore doesn't give a flying meep how much energy you use. the concern is where it comes from. if it weren't for your seething hatred of the 'priviledged elite', you might see that you're kinda... i dunno, on the same page. if this elite mothermeepingmeepsucker isn't willing to spend his money outlining the importance of this meep to joe sixpack, who the meep will? big oil?

guys: we need to focus more on making puns involving al gore's name, and the name of his movie.

I am no more on Al Gore's page than I am big oil's. Personally, of course, Al Gore, doesn't care what I do (though, I can virtually guarantee I have a smaller carbon footprint than him), but, I'm speaking in the collective here. He cares what collectively each of us uses, and wants the government to ration that. I say, let the market do that - a market where big oil is not propped up by the cost of our defence budget. Nothing will outline the importance of conservation to joe sixpack better than scarcity.

but lever, you know we can't meep off the constituents...

Hmm... I thought we were the constituents.