WHAT ABOUT BUSH?
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A Tale of Two Houses

*House #1* A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.

*House #2* Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American Southwest. A central closet in the house holds; geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the Winter and cools it in the Summer! The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigate s the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore;

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

An "inconvenient truth".

To boldly go...

Very few people are in a position to make globally significant moves that may at least delay global warming.

I think that CFL's require no legislation and if each of us used them-- I do, there would be positive results w/ regards to global warming.

To boldly go...

Gore has at least tried to bring consciousness to us.

I've now been here 28 years which is more than half my life.

I cannot see that the US populace, as a whole, or the voting public takes this threat of climate change, or global warming, at all seriously.

I think the vaste majority think that everything can go on much the same, with small variables and adjustments. Technology can be the solution. No sacrifice necessary. They don't have the science training, or the imgaination, or the practical experience to make the threat real.

So we go on.

When the extremes start to appear, they may or may not happen in the USA. And we will continue to ignore them. George Will will continue to call them a weather aberation and unproved. Many of us will tremble and still do nothing to correct our government.

For gods' sake. Get on board.

The post has two parts. The first speculates on Gore's potential run for president. The second speculates on the Hatfield-McCoy feud, this time as Clinton and Gore when Hillary will be president.

I guess we have solved all our present problems and it's time to deal with future ones.

Gore was a terrible candidate. Hillary may not be my choice, but she is smart, a good fighter and tough as nails. Please, we don't need a rerun of a bad movie.

Are the Clintons and Gore going to feud over the coveted title? May be. What's the rush to speculate while we may have Guilini in the White House.

Does it have to be either/or? There's enough work to go around to everybody, including Al Gore AND Hillary Clinton, in or out of the White House.
The key to understanding for all of us is an intellectual curiosity. Both have it; both will use it. I do not worry about the tension.
Though this was an interesting new "take" on the prize news.

South by Southwest

President Hillary should offer Gore Sec of Energy or EPA head.

"George Will will continue to call them a weather aberation and unproved."

the "ice ages," and subsequent warmings, happened without human intervention so it's not entirely clear to me that humans are totally responsible.

that said, I still think we are "destroying the planet" and "we've fallen and can't get up" but that's an opinion based on what I love.

To boldly go...

Alas, the president will always own the franchise, which is scary. I can well understand Gore's reluctance to enter politics; Bob Herbert today allows him to articulate well. I can understand, too, his likely feelings that in other ways he can make a greater impact. And I can understand the difficulty of his winning should he enter the race.  

But Hoppy is right on Bush's seven years of frittering and what they have meant.  All scientists like the IPCC and advocates like Gore can do is science and advocacy, and it is not always enough. 

The scary moment for me yesterday was in turning to Common Dreams, which reran Gore's long, knowledgeable, and yet passionate speech from 2003 on civil liberties and the supposed war on terrorism. It reminded me that he has had more courage of his convictions than just on climate. However, it also reminded me that we're in as deep a mess as if he had never spoken. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

But Hoppy is right on Bush's seven years of frittering and what they have meant.

In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 against ratifying any treaty negotiated at Kyoto that (1) did not also set emissions limits on developing countries; and (2) that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.” Yet when the Kyoto negotiations faltered, Al Gore as leader of the American delegation agreed to a treaty that did exactly that.

i.e. it looks like both Bush and Clinton/Gore will both have 8 years of frittering.

To boldly go...

What difference does it make who or what is responsible? It's our duty as human beings to mitigate the damages, take some pride in where we live and clean up the dirty house.

The CO2 not emitted by Bush's house is overwhelmed by that emitted by the military's M1 tanks, helicopters, and Humvees.

news report:
SOUTHWEST ASIA (Balad Air Base, IQ): Members of the 340th Aircraft Maintenance Unit here are supporting the war on terrorism with their fleet of more than 20 KC-135 Stratotankers. During the past four months, members of the 340th AMU supported more than 3,200 sorties, which provided 107 million pounds of fuel to more than 14,000 aircraft.

The 340th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron flies between 20 to 30 flights, or sorties, a day, said Tech. Sgt. Kevin Kuehn, the specialist flight expeditor for the night shift. "We have more planes here than we have parking spots for, so we always have aircraft in the air," said Sergeant Kuehn, deployed here from Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D.

No, the description of #1 is Gore's Nashville home; the Carthage house is by all accounts smaller. But the Bush house in Crawford is nothing but a stage set, a prop built to a) make a rich kid look like more of a good ol' boy than just his hick accent could, and b) neutralize Gore's environmental credibility in 2000 (which, btw, was before the Gores bought the Nashville house & started renovating it), so he could look like he gave a crap about it.

Of course, I know from experience how much of a pain it is to do any major work in the Belle Meade zoning district-- they're pretty easy on additions as long as they don't exceed maximum volume standards, but hate anything that seems remotely unsual-- so the first thing that came to mind as soon as the RWNM started squawking was that Gore was in permit hell, which turned out to be true. Obviously building a new, ultra-green house would have had its own land-use and materials (producing & transporting) issues, and would have had to be more distant from Nashville (since we're not talking about middle-of-nowhere Texas), making transportation to and from more wasteful. And the truth is that we can't (and shouldn't) replace all existing housing stock, so I'm very much in favor of upgrading existing homes instead of wasting a lot of money, land, and new materials on vanity projects like the Bush set piece... I mean, once GWB's out of office and doesn't need the place, who's going to buy an expensive house that far out in the sticks, green or no?

Anyway, Gore's taken an old and appealing house and is making it more efficient, which in the long run is going to have to be what most of us do in order to improve energy use. It may be better to build an eco-house if one is determined to build new and contribute to sprawl regardless, but ultimately the greater benefit is going to be in making good use of our millions of existing homes, improving their efficiency as much as possible and conserving materials & transportation fuel in the process.

Naturally, the brouhaha about this is just part of the catch-22 that is always lying in wait for Gore: if he did the super-environmental thing, building an off-the-grid house with his bare hands thirty miles from nowhere out of soda bottles, and eschewing all air travel, he'd then be the biggest weirdo ever and mocked relentlessly for his strict adherence to principle. But if he just does what he encourages ordinary people to do-- upgrade insulation, change light bulbs, replace old appliances & cars with more efficient models, buy green power & carbon credits to offset necessary use-- he's not pure enough. Pure = freak; pragmatist = hypocrite. That's what happens when one's enemies are so loathsome, I guess.

When this all blew up in the spring, I pulled up my NES bills (same as Gore's power) and did some quick calculations, discovering that my use per square foot was roughly the same as his, although now I can't remember if I factored out his extra expense for green power or not. And my house is considerably smaller, with lower ceilings and far fewer people around during the day, since I very seldom work at home. You don't even want to know how much energy my office uses, though; it was built in the 1870s, so the outer walls are merely three layers of brick plus the interior plaster, the heating & A/C are aging, and there are twelve-foot ceilings & multiple chimneys that might as well be open windows half the time. It's also nine miles from my house, meaning that I drive 4500 miles a year just to & from work.

So yeah, Gore's doing a helluva lot better than I am overall, and I say good for him.

I didn't look at the photos-- the 20-room, eight-bath description is almost certainly the Belle Meade house, though, and unless they've gotten the utility bills from Carthage (and the Gores don't actually live there, of course), the ones cited are for the Belle Meade house as well. The Carthage house-- actually, there are a few houses on the farm property, but this is presumably the one that his parents built for their family-- is large for the area, but I don't think it's twenty rooms or eight baths, since that would have been pretty much unheard of in the fifties when the elder Gores built it. So there has to be some, er, fudging of the facts here, which is par for the course from these yahoos, I guess.

I don't know anything about the Bush property other than that it was built as his campaign was gearing up, for no apparent reason other than as an image enhancer. The less I have to think about him, the lower my blood pressure.

Gore's not the easiest guy in the world to work with.

Well, this certainly is news. I would think that someone who gets to be a US senator, a US vice president, and then wins an oscar, a grammy and the nobel peace prize would be easy to work with. In fact, it should be a requirement! I wonder how Al Gore slipped through the cracks all those times? It defies explanation. Why, every great world leader we've ever had has been "easy to work with", right? Just considering US leaders, they say that FDR and Harry Truman were pushovers. I guess back then when Gore was accused of being too weak, and needed to beef up his alpha male-ness, it was just a cover-up for the fact that . . .he was too difficult. This personality analysis is so confusing sometimes.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

This is "Polly wanta cracker" reportage at its worst - no proof, no evidence, just something Clemons heard somewhere, and thus must be so.

It's so pernicious that democrats repeat it as though it was fact.

He ran as a pale version of Clinton with carefully nuanced focused group-thinked DLC talking points. He didn't run as himself. Hillary is running the same kind of campaign Gore ran in 2000. We'll see if she does any better. She isn't Bill either.

I just so badly want a candidate who can escape group-think. Why are they all so intimidated! Shake things up somebody. This country needs more than nuanceed non-answers to a whole range of problems!

On the day that Gore was announced as the co-winner of the prize, the newscasters on CNN were speculating that Gore actually won because the Nobel committee want to issue a rebuke to the Bush administration. This isn't journalism, this is neighbors hanging over the back fence gossiping - and just as ugly.

I don't think Bush has just "frittered away 7 years doing nothing as the leader of the free world towards combatting global climate change." Much, much worse than that, I believe bombs and warmaking can't be good for the environment, any more than those fires at the oil wells were after the last ME war. So I don't think he's just wasted his chance to change the world for the better, he's actually making the world worse on a daily basis on many levels! Helluva job, Bushie!

Does the Nobel peace prize really carry much weight when it comes to persuading the United States to make painful sacrific, or more important foreign coutries to make sacrifices at the behest of the U.S. president?

"If Gore was as terrible a candidate as you say, I don't think he would have won the popular vote. But he did."

Gore was running to succeed an administration that presided over peace and prosperity. Clinton had approval ratings in the sixties. Gore should have been able to steam roll over Bush and not end up having to quible over the popular vote if he had been an even average candidate.

I recently read a really alarming article about the fact that there are really a lot more green type vehicles out there than we are allowed to buy. The article named about a half dozen or more vehicles that we should have a choice to buy, but the law does not allow their companies to sell them in certain states. There were only about eight states in which you can buy them. These were cars whose company names I knew, but they were basically alternative fuel cars, and the deterrent was laws. I'm really not sure where I found the article, but it was on the net, that I know. (And none of this has anything to do with what happened to the electric car!)

No, you said that it doesn’t matter how much human activity is causing climate change, we should spend whatever it takes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by humans even though it may not make much difference in the climate.

Unless you think the resources of the planet are unlimited, you have to make some judgement about how those resources are allocated.

I would like to have Gore honestly assess the fundraising activities and lobbyist influence upon Clinton, Obama, Edwards and anyone else who receives significant support, regarding the environmental issues which he says are important.

If there are significant differences---and being an Obama supporter, I believe there are---he should either point them out, and/or endorse the best candidate.

Exactly-- he's already said he wouldn't accept any kind of Cabinet position, and why should he? So he can work for someone else and go out there to sell half-measures he knows were meant primarily to boost a pol's image? There's no point; if he stays out of politics, he's free to say what he thinks... and I really, really hope he will say a whole lot over the next several years. He's rich, he's respected, and he's free. Nothing short of the presidency itself would be enough to give that up.

O.K. I am confused.

I think any reasonable person would interpret your statements on this thread to mean that we should reduce green house gas emissions regardless of wether doing so would make a serious difference in climate change.

Are you quibbling with how much we should spend to do so? Well, that debate would require determing what is to blame for climate change would it not? Something you said you don't care about.

Yes, you are confused. Any sentient person should be able to read my post and understand it. Deconstruction and interpretation are not needed by reasonable persons.

The following statement does not require deconstruction or interpretation:

"What difference does it make who or what is responsible?"

Are these your words of did someone hack into your account?

Obama wants to liquify coal, etc... He hid behind PR speak after environmentalists caught on.

To boldly go...

and it makes a huge difference since Gore's work goes in the garbage if it's a natural cause or a problem that man caused but can't stop.

for example, I've read that even if we stop emitting green house gases, the amount of stored heat will ensure that warming effects will continue for some time. i.e. if you apply the brakes while driving on ice, you'll slide out of control for a while...

To boldly go...

Mr. Clemons says:

I really did mean every word in my tribute earlier today to former Vice President Al Gore.

A classic setup, isn't it, for what follows shortly (the "but" sticking out like it was set in 64 point bold-faced type).

But there is a bigger, more complicated and admittedly cynical dimension to the Gore win.

AHA!  Fair and Balanced, Mr. Clemons, Fair and Balanced.  Perhaps Gore should return the prize to dispel the cynicism, huh?

And really,  Ray Kroc?  Are we super-sizing Mr. Gore?  The only crock I see around here ain't Ray.  It's a certain column to which I'm appending this wee comment.

aMike

"So, who cares about Bush's house?"

I care because global warming, and most other issues, are local issues-- my opinion.

i.e. First, people behave badly by driving alone in SUV's, building big homes and vacation homes, buying things they don't need, etc... and then they blame politicians for bad law instead of their own behavior.

Gore had the opportunity as VP to negotiate a viable Kyoto Protocol but he probably deferred to Clinton who opened up China to Wal-Mart and Gore knew that China was only viable if it wasn't forced to follow Kyoto.

Misleaders like that suck.

To boldly go...

Vince who?

OTOH, have you met Barack Hussein Obama?

«offtopic»

Linking to a Politico piece earlier this evening, Steve Benen blames South Carolina (it's the environment stupid) for the reemergence of mass smearmail connecting Obama to madrasses, terrorism, terrorists etc.

Except Steve somehow misses/overlooks/ignores the key graf where Insight credits "Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for pushing a story about Obama’s Muslim heritage.".

Politico:

For many people, the Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail is among the first things they "learn" about a man who was virtually unknown until recently and the campaign of whispers threatens to play a quiet role in defining him.

The whispers appear not to have surfaced during his 2004 Senate bid.

The first clear appearance of the theme on the Web came in a Dec. 18, 2006, column by Debbie Schlussel, a Detroit-based writer who often alleges ties between mainstream American figures ... “I had a lot of readers ask me about Barack Obama and his background, and a lot of them had heard he was a Muslim or thought he was a Muslim,” Schlussel said. “I looked into it, I found out his middle name was Hussein.”

The result: a column titled “Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim.” Schlussel’s theme was picked up in the Unification Church-owned online magazine Insight the next month, which reported -- with no named sources but a political twist -- that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign was pushing a story about Obama’s Muslim heritage.

«/offtopic»

Lovely.

And for some reason you feel the need to draw from it esoteric meaning, an existentialism that only you recognize.

We're all responsible for our planet, because we all live here. Whether the global warming is caused by greenhouse gases, or is caused by natural phenomenon, such as changes in sea currents by melting glaciers we must mitigate as far as it is in our power to lessen the danger. This is the important statement "whether god sent it as a warning to sinners, whether it is a completely natural phenomenon, whether it is an entirely man made crisis, at this time it is imperative that we treat the symptoms of which we are aware, predict new symptoms that may manifest themselves from time to time, and practice a careful husbandry of our resources as we investigate the coming climate change and its repercussions on the planet.

Of course we could follow your advice, spend the next twenty years trying to find someone to blame, through endless committee meetings, political conventions, science seminars and studying the Armaggedon time line, and watch you throw your hands up in surrender and claim "there's not enough proof!, there's not enough proof!"

It wouldn't hurt though, while you're waiting for your Saul on the road to Damascus epiphany for the rest of us to start the big clean up.

Suggesting Gore for those cabinet positions was satire, (just think how apoplectic the wingnuts would be) just as I once suggested President Hillary appoint Bill as Attorney general. (he could then investigate Ken Starr, Richard Mellon Scaife and wingnut Congressman Dan Burton) :-)

You can read up on the houses yourself,

EITHER HERE: Al Gore's Monthly Electric Bill.

OR HERE: Chicago Tribune: Bush Loves Ecology -- At Home.

In these reports, it was noted that the "Nashville Electric Service" made the claim so it wasn't "back calculated" as some speculate here.

In my world view, buying green energy isn't enough, everyone has to cut consumption locally. i.e. nobody on this list would accept a nuclear reactor that leaked radiation as long as the owners donated money to clean up nuclear radiation in another state.

Thus, I believe that Gore's a fraud.

To boldly go...

news report:
Most of the remaining doubts some scientists harbored about the impact of human activity on global temperatures have disappeared in the last few years. Gore's recital of climate facts in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" contains some flaws, but most experts agree he is correct on the biggest point: The earth is on a path toward a perilously warm climate and the release of greenhouse gases is playing a key role. . . .most experts said Gore's overall point faithfully reflects what climate researchers have found. . .

The increasingly clear message of research on climate change began to emerge in the 1970s. The conclusions solidified as scientists gathered more data on prehistoric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that help warm the earth. That research shows pollution from sources such as power plants and automobiles is causing a spike in greenhouse gases, unprecedented in the 500,000-year record preserved within the ice of Antarctica.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-gore-scienceoct13,1,5559471.story

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

So someone who is still using energy but who put in place items that use less energy is on a par with some energy gulper?

My Prius is just as guilty as your Hummer or Ford Excursion?

It is interesting to see the fact that a number of Kyoto nations seem likely to miss their targets replaced by the psuedo-fact that none of the Kyoto nations have met their targets ...

... that is true by definition, since the targets involve five year averages, and the first five year period is not yet started, let alone complete. None can be said to "have met" their targets, even those that are currently on track.

How can the most dramatic possible argument in favor of taking action be trotted out as if it is an argument against taking action?

We know that the climate on this planet has been far more extreme, in both directions, than it has been during the last 5,000 or so years, and we know that the shifts from our present mild conditions to extremes of heat and cold can take place in time-scales that we can in fact experience ... and we know that we do not know for certain whether it is safe to continuously increase the level of CO2 beyond levels ever recorded in the fossil record ...

... and therefore we should try the experiment to see if the result really is as bad as our best modeling suggests? When it can just as easily be worse than our best modeling as better than our best modeling?

This is the same as arguing that we should drive faster in a fog on a winding road than in a clear day on a straight road when we can see the traffic i