Relentlessly Searching for Hipocrisy

It’s kind of a running joke among my friends to call me out when I do something that is not 100% eco-friendly.  It isn’t because my friends have particular views about the environment.  Rather, it’s just easy to point out when someone who writes an environmentally friendly blog has to drive somewhere, or accidentally leaves a light on.  It’s all in fun, of course, and I take no offense.  In a first-world country it’s practically impossible to have no carbon footprint.

Yet over the past year, anti-environmentalists have tried - at every opportunity - to accuse Al Gore of being a hypocrite.  In addition, they imply that Gore’s supposed hypocrisy is prima facie evidence that climate science is flawed.  I am writing this article to assert two things.  First, Gore’s actions do not show that he is a hypocrite in the sense that anti-environmentalists claim.  Secondly, even if Gore were a hypocrite, his actions do not prove nor disprove climate science.

The second assertion is relatively self-explanatory.  No principle of climate change has anything to do with Al Gore.  Al Gore could decide climate change doesn’t matter anymore, and this would not change climate science at all.

But back to the first assertion: Al Gore is not a hypocrite.  The claim that Al Gore is a hypocrite became popular after An Inconvenient Truth  hit theaters last summer.  Those who opposed Al Gore’s message claimed he was being hypocritical for flying around in airplanes and driving around in cars spreading his message across the globe.  They said that all of his travels wasted a lot of fuel and created CO2 emissions, and thus, he should be condemned for hurting his own cause.

This is faulty reasoning, because it ignores the fact that sometimes one must use something he opposes to accomplish something he supports.  In this case, Gore opposes excessive use of transportation fuel, but he believes the reward in using it outweighs the costs, so he’s going to go ahead and burn the fuel to accomplish a greater good.  I believe it would hurt his own cause more than help it if he were to stay at home instead of go out and campaign for a action on climate change.

The next major Al Gore hypocrite accusation came when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (a self-proclaimed conservative Think Tank) somehow got hold of Gore’s energy bill for his Tennessee mansion and it showed he had a high electricity bill in 2006.  As I said before, there are some grains of truth in this report.  However, Gore still has offices for himself, Tipper, and probably still has secret service detail, all at his house, driving up his energy costs.  In addition, his energy bill is really high because he purchases all of his power from green sources which produce no carbon dioxide at all.  Finally, some of the energy use over 2006 was a result of the Gores constructing things like a rainwater collection system at their house, which in the long run is environmentally friendly.  He also buys CO2 offsets to reduce his net CO2 emissions to zero [note: CO2 offsets, when purchased through a respectable source, do work.  This is how.].  In short, the fact that he owns a mansion is a little hypocritical, but he goes through so many steps to reduce his CO2 emissions that he’s doing better with his home than most Americans.

After the energy bill fiasco, Gore decided to launch Live Earth, a 24-hour concert around the globe, intended to raise awareness for climate change.  Before and after the concert, anti-environmentalists pounced on the fact that concerts use energy, and using energy creates CO2 emissions.  That is true.  Yet this is no different from Gore flying across the globe spreading his message.  If he believes that the benefit of this concert outweighs the costs, he should go ahead and have the concert.  Producing CO2 now so that in the long run, less is produced, is a completely non-hypocritical way for Gore to fight for the planet.

The most recent attacks on Gore came when he attended a rehearsal dinner for his daughter’s wedding.  They ate Chilean Sea Bass, a fish which is often caught using unsustainable and illegal fishing methods.  Critics bashed him yet again for supposed hypocrisy, even though he probably didn’t even know what he was eating or whether the Chilean Sea Bass was often caught in an unsustainable manner.  In the end, though, it turned out this Chilean Sea Bass was from a sustainably managed population, so he did nothing wrong.

*********

The reason I am writing this article is because these attacks have become absolutely silly.  I expect in the next few months to see attacks on Gore because he had to double-flush his toilet after a trip to the bathroom.  The goal of the individuals accusing Gore of hypocrisy is clearly to cast doubt on the climate change hypothesis.  And that is a perfectly reasonable goal.  However, the way to go about refuting the climate change hypothesis is not to criticize one individual messenger’s personal life (which is not even hypocritical).  It is to refute the climate change hypothesis.  In no way is Al Gore’s lifestyle the deciding factor for whether or not the human population needs to tackle the issue of climate change.

Ideally, we as a civilization find that climate change is not a serious issue.  If this is the case, we will be able to avoid some potentially serious costs converting our economy to reduce our CO2 output.  Second best, we find that climate change is a serious issue and address it.  Sure, it will cost a lot economically, but it will cost less than the damages of unmitigated climate change.  Third best, we attack the issue of climate change even though we didn’t need to.  This will cost us a lot of unnecessary money, and hopefully we can avoid this situation.  Worst, we do nothing and climate change causes unmitigated damage to the world.

We want to avoid situations 3 and 4.  The way we avoid these situations is by debating and reasoning, using science, to decide as a civilization whether or not climate change is a serious issue that we should address.  The way to debate and reason is to provide evidence for or against the climate change hypothesis, followed by critique of this evidence.  This evidence has nothing to do with Al Gore’s lifestyle.  Therefore, if one wants to criticize the climate change hypothesis, the best way to do so is to ignore Al Gore’s lifestyle and focus on the issue at hand.