Subscribe"1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.
2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero."
"This evening, Bloomberg Radio will fail even the most basic level of journalistic ethics when they take part in the right wing smear of Al Gore.
The 'Tennessee Center For Policy Research' is reporting they will be interviewed by Bloomberg Radio tonight.
Only one problem. The Tennesse Tax Department does not consider the Tennessee Center to be a 'legitimate' organization.
So why didn't Bloomberg look into that?
Well, maybe having Al Gore receive an Oscar last night just wasn't too convenient for them, and the smear machine is firing on all cylinders.
I am going to call and ask why they would give credence to a lie and a fraud. You should too."
'SPN is a national network of state-based right-wing organizations in 37 states as well as prominent nationwide right-wing organizations. Through its network SPN advances the public policy ideas of the expansive right-wing political movement on the state and local level.'As of Feb. 16, the Tennessee tax dept. considers them 'not a legitimate organization' because of their misrepresenting themselves involving questions about the group's opposition to a state crackdown on drug dealers."*
”A day after receiving Oscar glory for a documentary on global warming, former Vice President Al Gore was called a hypocrite by a Tennessee group saying his Belle Meade home is using too much energy.from The Dickson Herald's Tennessean.com.
The home’s average month electric bill topped $1,359, according to the group.
‘As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk (the) walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,’ said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
Electric bills obtained by The Tennessean, however, showed that Gore is paying a premium on his bills to be part of the ‘green power’ program. Gore purchased 108 blocks of ‘green power’ for at least each of the last three months, according to a summary of bills from Nashville Electric Service.
That’s a total of $432 a month spent to pay extra for solar or other renewable energy sources. NES power – outside this program - is derived largely from coal, which emits carbon, a green house gas.
The green power purchased by Gore in those three months is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans, or recycling 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on the utility's Web site.
Gore’s movie details how greenhouse gases are trapping heat next to the earth, causing a changing climate with melting ice caps and more violent storms.
‘Every family has a different carbon footprint,’ said Kalee Krider, a spokeswoman for Gore.
The Gore’s 10,000 square foot house on Lynnwood Boulevard doesn’t have a small one.
The Green Power Switch program, however, isn’t all he and his wife, Tipper, are doing, Krider said.
They use compact fluourescent lights and are in the midst of a renovation project that includes having solar panels installed on their home to reduce fossil fuel consumption more, she said.
Their car? A Lexis hybrid SUV.
They put money into an investment company that Gore co-founded with a man named David Blood and it, in turn, sends the money to pay for solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe.”
"The passive-solar house is built of honey-colored native limestone and positioned to absorb winter sunlight, warming the interior walkways and walls of the 4,000-square-foot residence. Geothermal heat pumps circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground. These waters pass through a heat exchange system that keeps the home warm in winter and cool in summer.
A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof urns; wastewater from sinks, toilets, and showers cascades into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is then used to irrigate the landscaping around the four-bedroom home."*
"Fed up with federal inaction and convinced of the dangers from global warming, five governors from Western states agreed Monday to work together to reduce greenhouse gases.
Their promise to target global warming was the latest of a rush of new ideas shared this week as states push ahead on climate change and clean or alternative energy."
On a more fundamental level, the issue points to a core difficulty westerners have with any good act. Somewhere in our cultural history we drew a very strange line in the sand that in essence says, "You are free from any allegations of wrong doing or immorality, unless you endorse improving a wrong, or the state of the world at large. In that case, you need to be a saint or else you're a hypocrite."
The Associated Press, however, apparently asked a spokeswoman from the Nashville utility company, Laurie Parker, if the policy group had actually obtained the information from them, and she said the utility never got a request from the policy center and that no information was ever turned over to them.Upon reviewing the utility bills, the AP found that the Gores used tens of thousands of kilowatt hours less than the fabricated numbers reported by the right-wing smear group. Brilliant!
All the information that we referenced in our press release, “Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use is His Own ‘Inconvenient Truth,’” was collected through public records requests. We used public information requests often in out work.
In this case we requested – and received – the information from public utilities.
A great resource for anyone interested in open records laws is the Investigative Reporters and Editors website. This site has resources about open records and the federal Freedom of Information Act. You can check it out at www.ire.org/foi.
One of the missions of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research is greater open government and better access to open records. We encourage voters and taxpayers everywhere to use their right to access government records – which are your records.
We are available to assist any Tennessean who seeks access public records or who has questions about the state’s public records laws.
Contact Trent Seibert at trent@tennesseepolicy.org.
Nicole Williams
VP of Operations
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