Peter Schweizer has a
devastating piece up at the San Francisco Chronicle about Al
Gore's purportedly carbon-neutral lifestyle.
Here are a couple of revealing sections:
Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on
excessive consumption, he and wife Tipper live in two properties: a
10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and
a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third
home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue
a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from
himself.
Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the
Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an
alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs
exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per
kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral
lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of
businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush
administration is using green energy for some federal office
buildings, as are thousands of area residents. But according to
public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use
green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted
recently, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were
looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about
inconvenient truths.
Okay, he's been a little slack, but it's not like Gore actually
makes money BOTH from slamming oil and mining companies AND from
owning them . . . right?
No:
Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment
for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large
stock holdings in Occidental Petroleum? As executor of his family's
trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of
dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil
drilling in ecologically sensitive areas. Living carbon-free
apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock-free. Nor does it
necessarily mean forgoing a mining royalty, either.
Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but
Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore received
$20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operated a
zinc concession on his property at least until late 2003. Tennessee
has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron
and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork.
topics:
Business, Environment, Energy, Oil
