In its original story, The Tennessean reported that Gore buys “carbon offsets” to compensate for his home’s use of energy from carbon-based fuels. As Wikipedia explains, a carbon offset “is a service that tries to reduce the net carbon emissions of individuals or organizations indirectly, through proxies who reduce their emissions and/or increase their absorption of greenhouse gases.”

Wikipedia goes on to explain that “a wide variety of offset actions are available; tree planting is the most common. Renewable energy and energy conservation offsets are also popular, including emissions trading credits.”

So far, so good. But how Gore buys his “carbon offsets,” as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper’s report, Gore’s spokesperson said Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe, she said…
Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.

And it is not clear at all that Gore’s stock purchases - excuse me, “carbon offsets” purchases - actually help reduce the use of carbon-based energy at all, while the gas lanterns and other carbon-based energy burners at his house continue to burn carbon-based fuels and pump carbon emissions - a/k/a/ “greenhouse gases” - into the atmosphere.

Gore’s people tout his purchase of “carbon offsets” as evidence that he lives a “carbon-neutral” lifestyle, but the truth is Gore’s home uses electricity that is, for the most part, derived from the burning of carbon fuels. His house gets its electricity from Nashville Electric Service, which gets its from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which produces most of its power from coal-burning power plants. Which means most of the power being consumed at the Gore mansion comes from carbon-emitting power sources.

Wikipedia again:

The intended goal of carbon offsets is to combat global warming. The appeal of becoming “carbon neutral” has contributed to the growth of voluntary offsets, which often are a more cost-effective alternative to reducing one’s own fossil-fuel consumption. However, the actual amount of carbon reduction (if any) from an offset project is difficult to measure, largely unregulated, and vulnerable to misrepresentation.
Did you get that? Carbon offsets are an “alternative to reducing one’s own fossil-fuel consumption” and yet “the actual amount of carbon reduction (if any) from an offset project is difficult to measure, largely unregulated, and vulnerable to misrepresentation.”

One way to misrepresent things: Tell a newspaper your stock purchases are really purchases of “carbon offsets.”

Meanwhile, Gore runs around the country and the world trumpeting “climate crisis” and blaming man’s use of carbon-based energy - burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel as he goes. His efforts have served to put climate change at the top of the national and even global agenda, driving up the value of the stocks and companies viewed as “green” or environmentally friendly. Companies like those his investment management firm invest his own and other peoples’ money in. (You can see a list of Generation Investment Management’s holdings here, courtesy of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.)

As one commenter posting here and on other blogs has noted:

Hmmm. The Goracle is chairman and a founding partner of Generation Investment Management LLP, a boutique international investment firm that invests other peoples’ money, for a fee, into the stocks of ‘green’ companies. … So when Al beats the drum for possible future global warming, he’s also drumming up business.
And profiting from hyping the “global warming” crisis.

In a nutshell, Gore consumes large amounts of carbon-based electricity while he trumpets a growing “global warming” crisis that drives up the value of “green” companies like the ones in which he buys carbon offsets invests in their stocks.

A primary rule of good investigative journalism is, “Follow the money.” The media - and perhaps the SEC - ought to take a deeper look at Gore, Generation Investment Management and his carbon offset stock purchases.

Asides:
Gore’s huge electric power usage at his Nashville home isn’t the only example of how the prophet profit of environmental doom hasn’t always lived as if he believes his message. During the eight years Gore was vice president, he voted in four national elections. Every single time, he and his entourage and security detail and accompanying media flew to Nashville on a large government jet, burning thousands of gallons of fossil fuels and pumping huge amounts of carbon emissions directly into the earth’s atmosphere, and then drove in a caravan of fossil fuel-burning vehicles from Nashville International Airport east on I-40 to Carthage, Tennessee, so the local and national TV cameras could get video of him at the voting booth. And then the whole caravan headed back to Nashville for the plane ride back to DC. Traffic had to be halted on Nashville’s interstates and side streets every time - sometimes during rush hour - idling thousand of vehicles that just sat there, burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon pollution, just so Gore could create a media photo-op.

He could have instead voted by mailing in an absentee ballot.

Also… Pajamas Media has photos of Gore’s energy-devouring Nashville home. And while some bloggers have likened “carbon offsets” to the “indulgences” the pre-Reformation Catholic Church sold to the wealthy so they could continue to sin, ithe blogger at The Virginian says carbon offsets are more like the “sumptuary laws” of medieval times, laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures.

In the Late Middle Ages sumptuary laws were instated as a way for the nobility to cap the conspicuous consumption of the up-and-coming bourgeoisie of medieval cities. … The danger is that the use of “carbon offsets” will create two things that re morally monstrous: a de-facto sumptuary law and the impoverishments of the poor and powerless of this planet. The creation of an aristocratic elite that differentiates itself from the hoi polloi by its ability to buy “carbon offsets” while the rest of the planet is forced by environmental laws into a smaller and smaller carbon straightjacket is not so far fetched.
Read the whole thing.

And then mosey on over to Jim Treacher’s house of bloggage The Daily Gut for this:

It’s great that he’s using solar panels and all that, but notice he’s not disputing how huge his electric bill still is. What the hell is he doing in there? Is he a Terminator from the future and requires constant recharging? (That would explain pretty much everything.)
Hat tip: Tim Blair via Ed Driscoll, both of whom have more good stuff on the Goracle’s energy hoggishness.

Updates follow…

Update: The Economist - not exaclty a right-wing rag - calls Gore’s response to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s original report on his huge energy consumption “flatly silly.” The piece has an excellent discussion of why “carbon offsets” are a shell game that may not actually do anything to help reduce carbon emissions.

Update: Via the blog on the website of carbon offsets marketer TerraPass I found a recent New York Times story that is skeptical of carbon offsets.

Some carbon-offset firms have begun to acknowledge that certain investments like tree-planting may be ineffective, and they are shifting their focus to what they say is reliable activity, like wind turbines, cleaner burning stoves, or buying up credits that otherwise would allow companies to pollute.

Still, as demand for greener living grows, the number of companies jumping into the game has multiplied. At least 60 companies sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from only about a dozen selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004, according to Abyd Karmali of ICF International.Yet another perverse effect, say critics, is that some types of carbon-offset initiatives may actually slow the changes aimed at coping with global warming by prolonging consumers’ dependence on oil, coal and gas, and encouraging them to take more short-haul flights and drive bigger cars than they would otherwise have done.

Climate Care, for example, has linked up with Land Rover, a maker of sport utility vehicles, to help the company offset its own emissions. As part of a promotional program, Climate Care also helps purchasers of new Land Rovers offset their first 45,000 miles of driving.

In that way, the program may actually help sell “larger cars with higher emissions” and thus contribute more to global warming, according to Mary Taylor, a campaigner with the energy and climate team at Friends of the Earth.

The words “snake oil” come to mind…

Too bad that $110 million that well-intentioned but gullible folks spent on “carbon offsets” couldn’t have been invested in developing hydrogen fuel-cell technology closer to the point that it can replace the internal combustion engine. That’s a “carbon offset” that actually would make a difference.

Update: A commenter at the TerraPass blog foresaw the Al Gore hypocrisy controversy, posting the following comment on Feb. 20, nearly a week before the Tennessee Center for Policy research put the spotlight on Gore’s energy usage:

The criticism [of carbon offsets] is so persistent because everyone likes to rail against perceived hypocrisy - it’s easier than engaging the merits of a policy. (The Times article tries to address the merits, in EXTREMELY ANECDOTAL fashion.)

Environmentalists and leftists are somewhat guilty of obsessing over hypocrisy, which provides some of the drumbeat behind the NYT articles. But I guarantee that coverage of carbon “indulgences” will get worse if/when Al Gore runs for President, because no-one likes to trump up pseudo-stories about liberal hypocrisy like oil industry-funded libertarian shills and the smear merchants of Fox News.

Um, actually, the environmentalists and the left rushed to defend Gore’s hypocrisy, not to attack it. And it was all of the media - the liberal networks as well as Fox - which covered the Gore story.

Post Script: Just for grins I checked my own electric bills to see how many kilowatts of power I use per month on average. The answer: 2,327. At that rate, it would take me nearly eight years of electrical usage to equal what Gore used in one year. In hot August 2006, when Gore’s home consumed 22,619 kilowatts of power, my home consumed 4,090. Of course, his house is thrice as large as mine, and also has a guest house and a heated pool, but, still, he used more than five times the electricity I used. And he doesn’t have two little kids who generate mountains of dirty laundry…

Without Al Gore and Michael Moore, Lord help us…

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i´m from germany. I left eastgermany in 1987. I´f seen two sites of germany. i´m very interest in history and reality. I´m not really impressed from Al Gore´s documentation. I´ve seen it on pro7 on german tv. Today on 07-July- 2007. But, i think that he would the one of the best president that amerika ever had. It´s not only the climatic discussion. It´s more than that. I can give you an advice: Amerika doesn´t need a president with an unrivaled self-aggrandizement. Amerika needs a president like Al gore. He´s somebody standing on the ground of reality and doesn´t ignore the interests from the wide sections of the populations. Germany works only over his gouverment. We -the population -We haven´t any influence more. We are Germans. We ae still alive and we are happy with this. But i´m somebody whitch ist interests in global living together. (May thats wrong written).

AL Gore!

Please try it again!

The Americans aren´t silly. Years of war under Bush, Reagan aren´t really good. Only for the economy.

May its an argument that the statutory- and the national health insurance it will be beneits to the society.

I hope for Amerika that AL GORE stands as a candidate for president.

greatings from Germany
Yvonne Hiesener

(I´m sorry for the spelling)

Is it possible that a brand new party, say something apolitical like an Elders’ Party, headed up by Gore, could drag in not only millions of disaffected voters but also a lot of fresh faces from the boomer generation who could do good work running communities, states, and the country but who now shun both parties?

Quite a vision arises: the Boomers make good on the promise of their hippy days by doing public service. The culture of fear becomes a culture of love. Imagine.

No? Oh, I forgot. This is America. We’re stuck with the Jackass and the Leffelunt, forever, it seems.

They shoot presidents, don’t they? Maybe losing Al to this tainted office is a bad idea.

On the other hand, can we even guess what can be accomplished in the face of an administration gone power-mad and holy-roller crazy?

Okay, Al. Just wait until the last minute…if there is one.