Al Gore and Hypocrisy

The revelation that Al Gore's carbon footprint is embarrassingly large has inspired some gleeful anti-greenery - today this from Stephen Glover. Though pro-green myself, it is clear to me that Gore had it coming. His film was highly autobiographical and, towards the end, made a very strong argument for the incremental effectiveness of taking small steps to reduce emissions, even providing, during the closing credits, a list of the things individuals should do. He put pressure on individuals as much as governments and, therefore, can reasonably be criticised for failing to live up to his own standards. And Glover is right to say the environment has become an easy political power-play. Green campaigners make this worse by issuing suspect claims. Greenpeace has a terrible record in this area notably over the Brent Spar storage buoy in the North Sea. This did not contain the oil Greenpeace said it did and, as James Lovelock pointed out, sinking it in the sea would be environmentally beneficial as iron promotes the growth of fish stocks. Also, anti- 4X4 campaigners, as I showed in my recent article, have overstated the numbers and emissions of these cars and made people think any car is okay as long as it is not a 4X4. All of which is, of course, a massive distraction from the central truth. The earth will not long tolerate our rapacious species. And, even if you doubt this, why should we persist in our dependence on tainted and risky Saudi oil?