Al Gore and Drudge

Drudge tells us what a hypocrite Al Gore is for using so much energy in his home. It may be true. I have no idea, since Drudge also apparently mis-reported (then removed from his site) that Gore used 5 cars to drive 500 yards in Cannes. (By the way, I don’t even know if the attack on Drudge is true, and I don’t care enough to bother finding out.)

Unfortunately, smear and lie is a political tactic, so I don’t believe anything until I hear a few rebuttals and can do some research on my own.

Also, the “almost true” tactic is very common. That is, take something that’s innocent, and present it in a way that’s difficult to deny, but that looks much worse than it is. An example would be using one of Bush’s verbal stumblings (“There’s distrust in Washington… I’ll work hard to try to elevate it”) to imply that he really meant that he wants more distrust. He said it, but he didn’t mean it, and it’s wrong to try to create a stir pretending that he did.

Mind you, that’s just an example. I doubt that anyone actually did try to create stir about that, but they could have.

For all I know, Gore uses all that electricty in order to raise baby whales in his backyard. Or he has 10 fax machines and 30 phones running at all times as he tries to get governments around the world to commit to recycling. I’m just saying that I don’t take a hostile source on face value. This is true when reading history as well as when reading current events.

So that’s the first part: I don’t know whether to believe it, or whether, even if true, it’s bad.

The second part is that I also use more energy than most people in the world. Should I cut back until I don’t? For all I know, Gore personally replaced all his lightbulbs with energy-efficient ones, installed storm windows, and generally does his best. Everyone does what they think is right, to a point. Once it becomes really ridiculous, most people stop. (Actually, most people stop way before that.) I believe in taking public transportation, but not if it makes my commute 3 hours instead of 45 minutes.

Gore dedicates a very large part of his life to the cause of environmentalism. Does that mean he should ALSO sell a couple of houses and turn off the AC? He’s already doing more for the environment than you or I, and would be doing so even if he tripled his energy use.

The third part is that his main message is about BIG changes, not little ones. If he went around telling people to never use electricity, then he’d be open for some criticism. But generally, he works to get people to vote for world-wide changes. I made this argument to someone at work yesterday, and came home to find that my friend Kevin (not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal environmentalist) makes it on his blog.

And the fourth part is that his message is either true or it isn’t. I have a feeling that most of the people saying that he’s a rat never believed him in the first place. Even if he is a rat, let’s judge his cause on its own merits. He’s just one guy. Even if he’s the worst energy hog on the planet, his message may not be wrong.

There’s no fifth part, except that I’m in a hurry and can’t edit this very well. As the quote goes: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”