Making a Tough Sell Tougher

Last Updated on June 3, 2018

You’ve probably heard about this elsewhere, but I thought I’d weigh in on the matter.

Al Gore, probably one of the most outspoken proponents of “going green” to reduce the effects of global warming, may have some explaining to do. According to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, the former vice president is gobbling up whopping amounts of electricity while urging the rest of us to do our part — and if possible, more than our part — to cut electricity consumption at home:

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

It goes on to report that though the average American home consumes more than 10,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, Gore’s home used nearly 221,000 kWh, more than 20 times the national average. His average monthly electric bill is around $1300.

What’s most ironic, it seems, is that since the release of his environmental documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, has increased by more than 2,000 kWh per month.

Over at the blog One Voice Out of Millions, a commenter suggests that it might be more fair to compare the energy consumption of Gore’s mansion to other homes of similar size rather than to the national average. But according to the National Association of Homebuilders, the average American home is 2,330 square feet. If Gore’s home is consuming more than 20 times the national average of energy, his home would have to be more than 46,000 square feet in size (larger than Bill Gates’s home!) for his energy consumption to be considered an “average” for his home’s size. I seriously doubt that Gore is living in a home that large.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, the argument is being made by Gore’s defenders that the main thing he’s trying to encourage people to do is go “carbon-free.” It’s entirely possible that Gore is participating in the Nashville Electric Service’s “Green Power Switch” program, which costs more, but uses energy generated through “clean” methods like solar and wind power. We can hope that he is. Still, even “all-green” isn’t always green:

“When the green power resources aren’t operating — for instance, when wind speeds are too low to generate energy — TVA’s other resources will continue to supply reliable electricity.”

Those “other resources,” of course, are the environmentally-unfriendly, non-carbon-free resources Gore is so strenuously urging us all to avoid.

The effort to reduce the human impact on global warming — and I do believe that there is a human impact on the environment — represents an inconvenience for the average person. It requires us to actively change the behaviors most of us have grown accustomed to without thinking twice: if it’s too hot, we turn on the air conditioning. If it’s cold, we turn on the heater. When we’re done with the newspaper or when we empty the 2-liter soda bottle, we throw them away in the nearest trash can.

Going to the closet to get a blanket, or turning on a fan, or placing plastics and newspapers in the recycle bin is a different kind of behavior. Thankfully, more and more people are learning that kind of behavior. But there are a lot more who aren’t, and who don’t really see the need to start because they think there’s nothing they can do.

If you’re going to expect others to change the way they live, unfortunately, you have to have a tough and compelling sales pitch, and part of that pitch is by walking the walk and showing how easily the consumption of energy can be reduced.

That’s certainly not the message that seems to have been delivered, and I have to wonder if it’s making more of those people on the fence think that it must not be that much of a problem if the “man” himself isn’t cutting his own electricity consumption!