ForumsWEPRAn Inconvenient Truth for Al Gore

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thelistman
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thelistman
1,416 posts
Shepherd

I just got this e-mail from my dad. I'm no fan of Bush, but this just fuels my hatred for "environmentalists" even more:

"A Tale of Two Houses"

House #1 A 20 room mansion ( not
including 8 bathrooms ) heated by
natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool
house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this
residence consumes more energy than the average American household does
in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over
$2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more tha n 20 times
the national average for an American home. This house is not situ ated
in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
House #2
Designed by an architecture professor at
a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green"
feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square
feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American
southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps
drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground.

The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats
the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no
fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter
electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system.
Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon
underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes
into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The
collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house.
Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to
blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~
HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville,
Tennessee; it is the abode of
the "environmentalist " Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford,
Texas;

it is the residence the of the President
of the United States,
George W. Bush.

An "inconvenient truth."

I sure hope this gets passed to
everyone! And, yes ... I DID check Snopes prior to forwarding it.

You can verify it at:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

  • 2 Replies
thelistman
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thelistman
1,416 posts
Shepherd

All too often do environmentalists pose the greatest threat. The leader of the environmentalist group at my college smokes 4-5 packs a day, 6 bowls of pot, and owns a jeep that gets 15 miles per gallon.

The environmentalists in my home town sent a petition around to clear out an "area" and plant hundreds of trees. What they didn't tell the petition signers was that this area was a golf driving range. It was a private business, owned by a resident. The mayor jumped aboard the plan and ordered the driver range owner leave with no compensation. This range was his life and only source of income. He had to spend over $150,000 to get the environmentalists of his back to continue his business.

Finally, you rarely see senior citizens in the environmentalist movement. Why? Environmentalists rose in the 1950's. They demanded that all fires in the forest be stopped. Back then, forest fires were natural, small, and died out by themselves. They had been going on for millions of years. Yet environmentalists felt they could mess with the natural order of Earth. After they pressured congress, any and all fires were put out. Now, tons of dead leaves, trees, and brush inhibit the forest floor. Now if someone so much as drops a cigarette, millions of acres burn. Senior citizens remember how environmentalists ruined the planet.

The Earth Police, for some reason, think they know evolution better than the Earth. They continually push their agenda, ruin lives, and have destroyed the forests. I salute those who encourage recycling, picking up trash, and good green habits. But hardcore environmentalists are ruining America and the world.

kanethebrain
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kanethebrain
242 posts
Nomad

Oh, Al Gore and your wacky house.

Is Al Gore a hypocrite for calling for reduced energy consumption while living in a energy sucking home? Yes. Are there mitigating factors, like the fact that he gets all his energy from green sources? Yes. Is this not the whole story because he's a stockholder in the company he gets his power from? Yes again. Does this make his argument that we should be more environmentally conscious invalid? No.


@thelistman: I agree with the gist of what you're saying, so don't take this hard. If you shore up your examples your argument would be better!

Just because you met one hippie that smokes out doesn't mean all environmentalists are like that. I'm not sure what cigarette and pot smoking have to do with the causes he believes in either (well, unless those causes are marijuana or tobacco laws). Many environmentalists drive cars that don't get the best gas mileage because, surprise surprise, a Prius doesn't handle mountain roads all that well. If he bikes/walks around town and drives as little as possible, and has a Jeep so he can go into the woods, I'd give him a pass on the car. Had he been driving a Hummer that he took out so he could drive the 100 yards to the store 3 times a day, I would have no sympathy for him.

The above is also a bad argument because it's an ad hominem attack, which doesn't affect the validity of an argument.

The thing you describe with the driving range simple could not happen legally. Even if the mayor wanted the land to plant trees, the principle of eminent domain only allows land to be taken "for the public good" and the owner must be paid "fair market value" for the land in any case. Any judge would laugh a case to take private land to plant trees out of court, and even if he didn't, the owner of the range would be paid for his land and could easily open elsewhere.

This doesn't apply because it's anecdotal, and the plural of anecdote is not data.

Also, I know more senior citizens in the environmental movement than senior citizens NOT in the environmental movement. I went to a Sierra Club meeting about a decade ago and wondered if I'd wandered into a retirement home by accident.


Now, you are correct that we should allow the land to burn a lot more than we do. Many forests been occasional burn offs to stay healthy, and postponing them only causes conflagrations that end up being more threatening to human settlement than they would be otherwise.

There are a lot of organizations that hurt the cause of environmentalism more than help it. Greenpeace and the Earth Liberation Front really end up causing more harm to the environment than preventing it.

However, like you point out, people that recycle, don't litter, and generally conserve are quite a help. If only more people would be like them, and look for realistic solutions to our problems than burning down car dealers because you think SUVs don't get enough gas mileage.

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