Do as I Say

Despite what some on the Left would say, the Global Warming debate is far from over.  This hasn’t stopped people like Al Gore and Prince Charles from trying to tell us we are destroying the planet!  Working towards less pollution, cleaner water, and more trees is a noble goal and one I favor but the matra they preach goes much further than that.  One of the greatest ironies to this story is that these two people (and others as we shall see) don’t apply what they tell others to do to themselves.  In my book, that’s what you call a hypocrite.

The interior of Prince Charles' plane.

Let’s start with Prince Charles.  Although he is in his social position by birth and not by merit, he is still generally considered a respected member of society and his word carries much influence.  According to a recent article by The Daily Mail, Prince Charles will:

travel to [South Africa] next month in a visit costing an estimated £300,000 as part of his crusade against global warming.

He will use a luxury airliner to transport himself, the Duchess of Cornwall and a 14-strong entourage to Chile, Brazil and Ecuador on a 16,400-mile round trip.

I wonder how much carbon dioxide his private jet will spew out or how much fuel it will consume?  Of course, flying in a private jet is something most of us mere mortals will never experience but for the Prince it’s just all in a regular day so he can go around telling the rest of us to stop using plastic bags, take public transportation, or buy a more fuel efficient car.  I wonder what sacrifices he is making?

Then we have the champion of Global Warming himself, former Vice President Al Gore.  He has won a Grammy and an Oscar and has done very well for himself preaching the gospel of a warmer earth.  Let’s take a moment and examine two different homes and you can see if you can guess who owns the energy efficient one:

One house, a modest ranch-style home, featured tons of energy-efficient features and cutting edge technology; the other, just a nice, big, ordinary mansion that soaked up electricity like a sponge does with water. The punchline? The modest, energy-smart ranch is owned by President Bush in Crawford, Texas. The energy-obnoxious mansion is owned by one Albert Gore of Nashville, Tennessee.

It’s a good thing he’s done so well because otherwise how could he afford his $30,000.00 utility bill?  The funny thing is, after he was embarassed worldwide for consuming so much Global Warming-producing gas, he decided that he would try and make ammends and improve the efficiency of his home.  A year later, Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research decided to check in on the Gore family to see what kind of progress they had made.  Turns out they were using 10% more electricity than before they made their “improvements.”

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

The list of people who can go toe-to-toe with Prince Charles and Al Gore is long such as Sting, attendees of the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, John Travolta, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Madonna among many others.  My two favorite people are, however, Senator Edward Kennedy and his nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (an environmental lawyer) because they are for green power unless it affects their views and property values!  Their position is so absurd even Greenpeace protested.

The U.S. and other countries should work towards using less energy whether that be better insulating your home, upgrading to more efficient appliances when you buy a new refrigerator, or driving less.  These steps can be taken if for no other reason than to save money and it is in this regard that governments should offer incentives to consumers to reduce their energy bills but the entire idea of having hypocrites preach what they don’t practice is absurd.

I don’t want to condemn the entire Left but, more often than not, it is Democrats who seem to preach this religion of Global Warming but often don’t follow their own advice.  Besides, if you are wealthy enough and if your guilt over running your home theater so much runs so high, you can buy Carbon Offsets and pay for somebody in a Third World country to plant a mango tree for you.

My personal thoughts on the issue of Global Warming is that most of the advocates seem to want to re-distribute wealth either through a Carbon Tax or to force people to adopt their way of life through some sort of naive view that we can live in a futuristic “Hydrogeon Economy” and can all afford to buy organic produce.  Unfortunately, there are plenty of people around chanting this mantra and they are very vocal and, as is the case with the hypocritical celebrities mentioned above, influential.  All of this chatter will eventually cost you and I money as they get elected officials to make their loopy ideas law.  In fact, way back in 1993 when Bill Clinton was president he proposed a BTU Tax which would have raised energy costs across the board by 3.5% to 5%.  All of this money that the U.S. government would have taken in would obviously have been wasted on pork projects and would have had the effect of making everything more expensive.  1993 might seem like a long time ago but I bet in the next few years the BTU Tax will make a comeback under a different name.

What I find most absurd, however, is that people like Al Gore continue to be so popular even though were he a Republican he’d probably be nailed to a board and suspended over the Potomac river for being such a hypocrite.  Instead, he wins an Oscar and a Grammy.  That’s how delusional his followers are.