Friday 2 March 2007
Right-wing water carriers go after Al Gore’s utility bill ☀
- OLBERMANN: He may never run for office again, and the man chosen president over him has now come around to his way of thinking about global warming. But face it, to the far right, Al Gore is still an inconvenient truth teller. Hard on the heels of his documentary’s Oscar came the headlines a non-partisan think tank had revealed that Mr. Gore’s own personal energy bill is 20 times the national average.
- So is our third story tonight outrageous hypocrisy, a minor embarrassment or a demonstration of a different kind of wind power? First, that allegedly non-partisan think tank, which just happens to have gotten its story picked up by the notorious Drudge Report today, is called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. Twenty seven-year-old President Jason Drew Johnson, hailing from the same American Enterprise Institute that takes money from big oil, cheer-leads the war in Iraq and consistently, and now to pretty consistent laughter, downplays global warming.
- That said, even a partisan think tank can get the facts straight. So the facts, last year, Gore’s Tennessee property consumed almost 221,000 kilowatt hours, 20 times the national average. It cost him more than 16,300 dollars. But Johnson’s press release, calling on Gore to walk the walk when it comes to home energy use, omits several other key facts. The former vice president’s home has 20 rooms, including home offices for himself and his wife, as well as a guest house and special security measures.
- Furthermore the Gores buy energy produced from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. Tonight, COUNTDOWN confirmed with the local utility officials that their program, called the Green Power Switch, actually costs more for the Gores, four dollars for every 150 kilowatt hours. Meaning, by our calculations, our math here, that the Gores actually chose to increase their electric bill by more 5,893 dollars, more than 50 percent, in order to minimize carbon pollution.
- The utility is also telling us that some smaller homes consume energy in the same range of usage as does the one on the Gores’ property. Surprise, surprise, there seems to be political subtext here.
