Gore: Take Personal Responsibility To Stem Crisis [had adopted a "carbon neutral lifestyle."....]

WNBC.COM ^

[Sub-Driver]

Gore: Take Personal Responsibility To Stem Crisis

POSTED: 2:27 pm EDT July 24, 2006 UPDATED: 2:30 pm EDT July 24, 2006

CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. -- Former Vice President Al Gore said his conscience is regularly challenged by a consumerism that contributes to the global warming he has made it his mission to reverse.

"It is so hard for those of us who want to live according to our values," Gore said Monday at the Chautauqua Institution, during the latest of countless lectures he has given on the topic.

"We're embedded in a culture that makes it so easy to just go with the flow and support a pattern that's horribly destructive," he said. "And so we need to address this personally."

For Gore, it was a return visit to the western New York think tank used by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, for debate preparation during campaigns. Gore lectured on global warming here in 1990.

Since then, the consensus that the planet is in crisis has grown stronger, he said, and the ability to make the point is not cluttered by campaign issues like the economy and health care.

"This is by far the most serious challenge that we face or have ever faced," he said during the 90-minute appearance. "None of the other ones will matter if we don't get this right."

Later, Gore planned to sign copies of his book, "An Inconvenient Truth." The related documentary film was being shown on campus.

[dashing doofus]

Damn. You are right. Look at all the carbon in this molecular model of ethyl alchohol.


http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/library/hydrocarbons/ethanol.gif

Has Al Gore taken a stand on ethanol?

[MistrX]

How can Al be "carbon neutral" when he flys around the globe on private jets?

[Izzy Dunne]

How can Al be "carbon neutral" when he flys around the globe on private jets?

He captures all the exhaust and inhales it in his hotel rooms at night.

[twigs]

My sides are splitting! And the dems dare criticize our current president?

[Dr.Deth]

Those BP commercials are ridiculous.

Oh, I love them. Sheer genius. Showing these feckless soccer moms and vacuous middle-management twits ranting about oil companies makes me want to jump in a Hummer and tow boulders up hills just to see what kind g.p.m. I can achieve. It's like those anti-smoking ad campaigns put together by the tobacco companies: bunches of loathesome, snotty adolescent wankers telling you how to life your life. Gee, maybe I should listen to them, since they're freshmen activists at Podunk State CC. Right.

These ad guys, although by and large about as useful to society as a field full of marbles, once in a while come up with something so insidious and viral, that I just have to applaud.

[techcor]

"here's $1 if you agree to not travel, cook, or manufacture X amount."

And, as I pointed out to a liberal friend, for money to have any value you have to buy stuff with it. Which means someone produces something for you . Which means they use energy thus putting CO2 into the atmoshphere. It's definitely a scam to try and provide wealth distribution to third world nations. Worse it's a welfare of sorts where the third world nations become dependent upon us because they are being paid to not manufacture there own goods.

[pepperdog]

I'm not really sure, but for starters we'll quit mowing the grass:^)

[Political Junkie Too]

iffen we recycled Ole Gore fer da 2008 election, we could re-cycle all his old campaign literature .....

You mean like, "A carbon-neutral lifestyle is a risky scheme?"

-PJ

[mike70]

I didn't count electrons, just protons and neutrons.

[Stegall Tx]

it was a return visit to the western New York think tank

Too bad he drowned in that tank...

Uh, I always figured AlGore was in the shallow end of the think tank business.

[dashing doofus]

The commercials are stupid. At least in some other countries they don't have to put up with Al's inconvenient truths. Hell, in New Zealand, they have an Environmental Minister named Mr. Carbon. Here's the headline:

"Chief Executive Appointment: Ministry for the Environment

Media statement, 26 March 2002. The State Services Commissioner, Michael Wintringham, announced today the appointment of Barry Carbon as chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment. Mr Carbon has until recently been the Director-General of the Queensland Environment Protection Agency..."

http://www.ssc.govt.nz/display/document.asp?NavID=113&DocID=1224

[Dr.Deth]

You're not seeing the subtleties. They show patently stupid people talking about how "oil companies should do something, cuz, it's like, for the environment, and we have a right to breathe fresh air" blah blah blah. They have no concept of what they want or how to get there and these unfocussed dissemblings are propped up as some sort of olive branch to the greenies (no pun intended), when in fact they're being ridiculed. The best part is, they don't even realize it.

[John Lenin]

America is indeed facing an energy crunch. For much of the year, gas prices have soared and supply has trailed demand. During the course of my ongoing investigation into potential anti-competitive and anti- consumer practices by the oil industry, I have obtained documents that raise serious questions about the circumstances leading to limited gas supply and high prices.

The oil industry and its allies would have the public believe that insufficient refining capacity, restrictive environmental standards, growing gasoline demand and OPEC production cutbacks are the primary reasons for the current oil and gas supply problem. However, the record shows – supported by documents I have obtained – that there is more to the story. Specifically, the documents suggest that major oil companies pursued efforts to curtail refinery capacity as a strategy for improving profit margins; that competing oil companies worked together to subvert supply; that refinery closures inhibited supply; and that oil companies are reaping record profits, yet may benefit from a proposed national energy policy that would offer financial incentives to expand refinery capacity. For the last several months limited domestic refinery capacity has taken center stage as the purported reason for insufficient domestic gasoline supply and higher prices.

In the mid-1990s too much refining capacity, not too little, concerned the nation’s major oil companies. At that time, the oil and gas industry faced what they termed “excess refining capacity,”a circumstance they viewed as a financial liability that drove down overall profit margins. The industry reduced the total amount of potential supply by closing down more than 50 refineries in the past decade. Since 1995 alone, 24 refinery closings have taken nearly 830,000 barrels of oil per day.

In September 1999, I released a report looking into the anti-competitive practices of zone pricing and redlining by West Coast oil companies. At the time of the 1999 investigation, industry officials explained higher gas prices as the result of refinery fires in California and worldwide production cuts spurred by OPEC. They did not blame inadequate domestic refining capacity as the culprit for restricted supply or high prices. Today, the nation’s major oil companies are experiencing record profits, thanks in no small part to higher prices at the pump. Despite the across-the-board financial gains of the industry, the Bush administration’s recently released National Energy Policy seeks to provide incentives, perhaps including relaxed environmental regulations, to quickly boost refining capacity. Information I have received during my ongoing investigation raises serious concerns that the nation’s major oil suppliers have set out in a strategic effort to orchestrate a financial triple play, a coordinated effort that would reduce supply, raise prices at the pump and relax environmental regulations. Unfortunately, in each case, it is the consumer who takes the hit.

The Oil Industry, Gas Supply and Refinery Capacity: More Than Meets the Eye

[Stegall Tx]

I wish one of these tree hugger types would pay me for my non-used CO2 credits. I think you can get a pack of 12 credits at the Piggly Wiggly pretty cheap.

I've actually been looking forward to the day I can sell the unused carbon credits on my farm. Since it's lain fallow for almost three decades, I figure I've got quite a few in the bank, and I would like to put them back in circulation.

[dashing doofus]

I'm not big on subtleties. Oil companies extract oil, and refine the crude into useful products like gasoline and home heating oil. What should they "do?"

Maybe the gubmint should force them to start producing advertising telling people NOT to buy the stuff they make, like the AGs did to the cigarette companies.

[Robert A Cook PE]

OK. WE know you can get a charge out of life that way, but that's jest between us....

[ZULU]

"Gore: Take Personal Responsibility To Stem Crisis [had adopted a "carbon neutral lifestyle."....]"

I always knew there was something strange about him.

I guess he doesn't have any hdyrocarbons in his body. His aminoacids must be built around a different element like ...silicon.

He must be ........ AN ALIEN!!!! Algore from Algol!!!!

[Yankee]

Awww Jeez, not that shithead again!

[Thalos]

But is there anything that will give me back the 2.5 hours I lost watching that movie?

[chiefqc]

Like the rest of the do gooders he's talking about everbody else not himself.