Kind of disappointed with the hipocrisy of the Live Earth gigs.

[Gamer]

It is a load of horseshit, Al Whore got an award last year, yada-yada-yada well everyone hail to the chief, let's all do as the master does, shall we.

 

A VERY INCONVINIENT TRUTH: POWER: GORE MANSION USES 20X AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD; CONSUMPTION INCREASE AFTER 'TRUTH':

 

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued a press release late Monday:

 

Last night, Al Gore's global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

 

Gore's mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] 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).

 

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

 

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh--more than 20 times the national average.

 

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh--guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore's average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

 

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore's energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

 

Gore's extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore's mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

 

"As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use," said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

 

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006."

 

 

 

 

Load of horseshit.

[jaymdee]

I couldnt give two hoots about carbon footprints and saving the planet.

 

It has nothing to do with saving the planet, its about saving the human race. The planet survived for millions of years before man came and will survive for just as long after we are gone.

 

These gigs are nothing more than raising the profile of the "rockstars" and adding a few more pounds to their bank balance.

 

 

Totally hate all this crap about why we should stop using fuel, electricity etc. Who wants to live in a sterile boring, no-fun world anyway, let alone for longer!!!

[colsoop]

Quite a good article about it here: CLICK ME

[Mike]

It's just an excuse for any random band to align themselves with something 'right on'... can't believe some of the shit they trotted out at Wembley.. Duran Duran for the second week in row? Who are these people who buy tickets for this shit..?

 

..and didn't we establish it was the sun killing the planet and not us?

 

Sakira and the Pussy Cat Dolls looked quite hot though..

[Paul]

And I thought the last ice age had killed off all the dinosaurs....

 

Nah, I survived ;)

[imi]

Joss stone on and i dont normally like her looks wise, but she's singing sexyerly

 

yeah, she looked ready for some action......

 

poor thing started crying on the stage.....she so needed a shoulder to cry on

[imi]

Quite a good article about it here: CLICK ME

 

that's a good read. also gamer's post puts things into perspective. Guess Mr Bore is simply trying to launch his presidential campaign by pulling wool over our eyes like the ones before him.

[toyotasuprauk]

I thought the concert was pretty good and Madonna’s set was really entertaining. Yes the concert would have used a lot of power, yes rock stars leave a big carbon footprint flying all over the world to do concerts of course they do what are they supposed to do stop performing? And of course a 20 roomed mansion will use more power than an average house what’s Al Gore meant to do only light and heat/cool 4 of the rooms in his house?

 

I’m surprised how much negativity I’ve heard towards the few people involved. Surely what these concerts did was entertain people whist at the same time make millions of people think about turning lights off when they leave a room and not leaving appliances on standby etc. Whether this makes a blind bit of difference I don’t know (or really care) but it can’t hurt?

[Gamer]

Don't you have a whale to save or a tree to hug ?

 

 

It was and is a sham.

[Tannhauser]

I thought the concert was pretty good and Madonna’s set was really entertaining. Yes the concert would have used a lot of power, yes rock stars leave a big carbon footprint flying all over the world to do concerts of course they do what are they supposed to do stop performing? And of course a 20 roomed mansion will use more power than an average house what’s Al Gore meant to do only light and heat/cool 4 of the rooms in his house?

 

I’m surprised how much negativity I’ve heard towards the few people involved. Surely what these concerts did was entertain people whist at the same time make millions of people think about turning lights off when they leave a room and not leaving appliances on standby etc. Whether this makes a blind bit of difference I don’t know (or really care) but it can’t hurt?

 

I would save your breath. Most of the people on this thread have already politicised the issue into some sort of left-wing fun-stealing conspiracy.

 

I've come to the conclusion on environmental issues that people believe what fits in with what suits them personally. Whether arguments are flawed or valid doesn't matter, whether the science is right or wrong doesn't matter, folks on the whole don't really want to know anything that pisses on their parade. In particular, they will resist to the last breath anything that makes them feel like they are being told off for having fun.

 

I can understand that, though the 'party today, fuck tomorrow' bravado is a bit silly. Guys with steady jobs and plans and all that pretending they're still some sort of badass mavericks. Boasting about not caring is what twelve year olds do when they're being told off.

 

Schwarzenegger recently made a really interesting speech on the perception of environmental movements - it's on the governor website. He mentions, iirc, how trying to win people over by guilt often builds resentment instead of serious consideration of the issues involved.

[Ark]

Schwarzenegger recently made a really interesting speech on the perception of environmental movements - it's on the governor website. He mentions, iirc, how trying to win people over by guilt often builds resentment instead of serious consideration of the issues involved.

 

Didn't Arnie get involved in one of those 'Pimp my Ride' programs recently? They built some 70's muscle cars on biofuels and hydrogen so they had performance and green credentials. Now that's the way to get people interested. Not with cars like the Prius that no self-respecting style conscious 21st century consumer would ever be seen dead in.

[RedM]

Didn't Arnie get involved in one of those 'Pimp my Ride' programs recently? They built some 70's muscle cars on biofuels and hydrogen so they had performance and green credentials. Now that's the way to get people interested. Not with cars like the Prius that no self-respecting style conscious 21st century consumer would ever be seen dead in.

 

Good point. The Koenisgsegg CCX (I think) actually has a higher bhp on biofuels than from pump fuel.

[Digsy]

Good point. The Koenisgsegg CCX (I think) actually has a higher bhp on biofuels than from pump fuel.

 

I think that will be true of most biofuel conversions. It certianly is for the Biofuel Elise.

 

Idon't know about this whole environment thing. I'm no longer going to question whether the environment is changing. It obvously is. Whether its man-made or part of a long timescale natural process - no idea. Can we help? Probably.

 

However, what I want to see is it not being used as a stick to beat us with. At the moment, the government's approach seems to be to dissuade us from using non-green technology by hitting us with tax penalties, or to dissuade us from dumping rubbish by making it impossible to get rid of the stuff without paying extra for it. If I could see evidence that this extra cash was going into projects to help give us sustainable green energy in the future, or a better recycling infrastructure then I'd be all for it. Unfortunately its looks like another excuse to make a fast buck while cuting back on expenditure, and then probably p*ssing the money up the wall. Who will end up better off? Probably a few politicians in the short term.

 

Now, give me the option to power my home from a local turbine and a refuse service that collects recyclable rubbish and garden waste from my house (in a biofuel truck of course) and I'll be right there. I know its not going to happen overnight, but nothing concerning infrastructure ever does in this country.

[Tannhauser]

Didn't Arnie get involved in one of those 'Pimp my Ride' programs recently? They built some 70's muscle cars on biofuels and hydrogen so they had performance and green credentials. Now that's the way to get people interested. Not with cars like the Prius that no self-respecting style conscious 21st century consumer would ever be seen dead in.

 

Yes, he mentions that:

 

Now, some of you have maybe seen the cable TV show called Pimp My Ride. Have you seen that? Maybe not, maybe not everyone has seen it. But the fact of the matter is, it’s a real cool show. It’s a real cool show, and what they do is, they take old junk cars that we normally should crush, and they make them into lowriders and they make them into muscle cars. Now, my teenage son watches that show all the time, and sometimes I watch it with him.

 

 

As a matter of fact, I recently did a segment of that show that will air on Earth Day, and the reason why it will air on Earth Day is because we take this cool show and they did something, and added something that was environmentally hip. Here’s what we did. We took a 1965 Impala, and we made it into a lowrider, but not an ordinary low-rider. We dropped in an 800 horsepower engine, and that 800 horsepower engine goes from zero to 60 in 3 seconds. Now, you know how fast that is—in 3 seconds. But it is biofueled, and that means that it emits 50 percent less greenhouse gases and it goes twice as far. Now, that’s what I call cool.

 

 

You see, now we cut down on the greenhouse gas emissions, so we don’t have to really go and take away the muscle cars, we don’t have to take away the Hummers or the SUVs or anything like this, because that’s a formula for failure. Instead what we have to do is make those cars more environmentally muscular. That is what we have to do. Now, because of that, one of my Hummers now is running on biofuel, and another one of my Hummers is now running on hydrogen. So those are the kinds of changes that we have made instead of getting rid of the Hummers.

 

Link: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/speech/5864/

[Tannhauser]

Now, give me the option to power my home from a local turbine and a refuse service that collects recyclable rubbish and garden waste from my house (in a biofuel truck of course) and I'll be right there. I know its not going to happen overnight, but nothing concerning infrastructure ever does in this country.

 

Agreed, it's all stick and no carrot. Until it becomes really easy and straightforward to protect the environment, most won't bother. It's understandable - it seems such a huge and nebulous thing to be trying to protect and an individual's own input, positive or negative, so tiny that it hardly seems worth it. It's not as if you've got anything you can see to weigh against the personal inconvenience.

 

I looked into a wind turbine for the house - turns out I would be dead from old age before it had paid for itself. My feeling of environmental responsibility doesn't extend to shelling out thousands of pounds that I'll never recoup.

 

The recycling infrastructure has always puzzled me. Just thinking about recycling from a landfill point of view, it wasn't exactly a surprise that landfill sites were going to run out. So why wasn't the infrastructure put in place years ago? I can only think that either it wasn't a high enough profile compared to economic growth etc, or they didn't think the public were ready to buy it.