Practise what you preach

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The Guardian of Hypocrisy

As has been widely noted, accusations of hypocrisy have made it a bad week for do-gooders on both sides of the Atlantic.

First the Prince of Wales was caught out. After remarking that the "key" to healthy nutrition for children was to ban McDonald's, perpetrators of such crimes against humanity as the Big Mac, it emerged that a similar offering (a Cornish pasty) from the Prince's own line of organic foods actually contains 21% more calories and 30% more fat (92% more saturated fat) than burger chain's flagship product (figures are per 100g; the pasty weighs 10g more than the burger).

Of course, as the Prince is nothing more than a figure of fun whom few take seriously, this revelation is nothing more than an amusing incident. More harmful are the accusations levelled against Al Gore - an intelligent, persuasive individual who has become a Green hero for his campaign urging (or hectoring, take your pick) all of us to pursue a Gaia-friendly lifestyle, lest disaster ensue.

For Mr. Gore, it's nothing less than a moral imperative to do so - it is, indeed, "the most pressing moral issue of our time".

The revelation that Mr. Gore's electricity consumption at just one of his homes is nearly 20 times that of the average American household has dented his image as the Green Moralist-in-Chief, and his self-defence is less than persuasive. Here it is, as presented at a "progressive" website, through a spokesperson:

"1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

"2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:

"'What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.'"

It's worth taking a brief look at this response, beginning with "100 percent green power through Green Power Switch". This refers to a programme in which electricity customers can opt to purchase 150kWh blocks of renewably-generated electricity, which is then fed into the general grid.

Mr. Gore is reported to have purchased 108 blocks a month for the last three months, which accounts for 88% - not 100% - of his average monthly usage for 2006 (18,400 kWh). And even if only 12% of his consumption is less than green, that's still equivalent to the entire electricity use for 2.5 average American households (888 kWh/month per household).

What's maybe even more interesting is the gas bill, reported to average $1,080 a month over the last year (none of these figures, first released by a Tennessee free-market think tank, have been disputed).

Nobody else seems to have done so, so it's interesting to see what that translates into in terms of emissions.

We learn from the US Department of Energy that Tennessee residential gas prices were around $13.50 per thousand cubic feet last year. So $1,080 would buy about 80,000 cubic feet. That dollar amount is an average monthly figure, so that would account for 960,000 cubic feet over the course of the year.

One cubic metre equals 35.29 cubic feet, so that translates to 27,200 cubic metres.

One cubic metre of natural gas emits 1.891 kg of CO2 (see page 13), so this represents a total of 27,200*1.891 = 51435.2 kg (51.4 tonnes) of CO2 emission.

By striking coincidence, this is within a whisker of total CO2 emissions per average US household - including household operations, automotive uses, and "indirect emissions" - which amount to about 118,000 pounds (53,636 kg).

The point bears repeating. Mr. Gore's natural gas-based emissions alone account for as much warming as the total due to electricity, heating, transport and "indirect" factors of an average American household.

But that's OK, isn't it? After all, the Gore family purchases carbon offsets - "a concept the right-wing fails to understand".

It's not just the wingnuts that fail to understand carbon offsets, however. Mr. Gore's understanding seems to elude professional doom-monger and media darling Mark Lynas as well. He approvingly cites green campaigners Carbon Trade Watch (no right wingers, they), who - in their publication The Carbon Neutral Myth (PDF) - compare offset purchases to medieval indulgences, and call the approach "fundamentally flawed".

Mr. Lynas' well-founded skepticism towards offsetting is probably why he didn't include the above mention of Mr. Gore's defence in today's rather lame Guardian column on the "rightwing campaign" and "hypocrisy witch-hunt" that's "smearing" Mr. Gore.

Here's a summary:

Paragraph 1: Everybody's a hypocrite. However:

"That does not stop us sitting in judgment of others, however, particularly those whose message we are unwilling to hear, and who, deep down, we would dearly love to see exposed as two-faced and, well, hypocritical."

No. Those "we would dearly love to see exposed" are those who spend their time preaching to us about "the most pressing moral issue of our time" while blatantly failing to follow their own dicta.

Paragraph 2: The fact that "Gore's mansion in Nashville uses 20 times as much energy as the average American household" [sic - that's just the electricity] is initially troubling. Even if it's pointed out by "a right-wing anti-environmental lobby group" - "its barbs hit home".

Why yes - they do.

Paragraph 3: Explains just why they do:

"The reason is simple: it is hard to trust someone who says one thing and does another."

Again, true.

Paragraph 4: Begins:

"So why this obsession with hypocrisy?"

Erm ... "The reason is simple: it is hard to trust someone who says one thing and does another".

Paragraph 5: We shouldn't conduct "witch-hunts" because people will be afraid to speak out without having altered their own behaviour first (is this a bad thing?). Pointing out hypocrisy leads to negative cynicism.

Sorry, Mark - it's the hypocrisy itself, not its exposure, that does so. Would Mr. Lynas blame Woodward and Bernstein, and not Nixon, for the cynicism that Watergate engendered? Of course not.

Paragraph 6: People like eco-hypocrites. People who actually live according to their principles are "just annoying".

No comment.

Paragraph 7: I like this one so much I'm going to reproduce the whole thing. The would-be coup de grace misses the point spectacularly:

"The charge of hypocrisy against environmentalists may also be illegitimate as well as irrelevant. In my view, Gore was right to rack up thousands of air miles in his campaign to raise awareness of climate change: the political shift he has helped to engineer, particularly in America, has been truly profound, and is one of the few real causes for optimism on climate change today. If he had stayed at home in Tennessee with the lights and heating off, wearing organic woolly jumpers and feeling generally good about himself, we would have a lot further to travel in terms of awareness-raising than we do now. Being a purist may be comforting, but it is unlikely to change the world."

I can almost buy the point being raised here - that flying to raise awareness could conceivably be justified. Unfortunately for Mr. Lynas, the revelations about Mr. Gore have nothing to do with flying, or with "his campaign to raise awareness of climate change" - they're solely about excessive household energy use. So this concluding paragraph is completely irrelevant to the case at hand, and Mr. Lynas paper-thin argument goes up in clouds of CO2 and particulates.

It's tempting to dismiss Mr. Lynas' defence of Mr. Gore as laughable rubbish, but we shouldn't be too hard on the poor chap. After all, he was faced with an impossible task.

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Op vrijdag 2 maart 2007 23:22 schreef Zyggie het volgende:
Dit in tegenstelling tot de visie dat er van bovenaf structureel dingen moeten worden verandert, waarop de individuen automatisch volgen.

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Op vrijdag 2 maart 2007 23:25 schreef Zyggie het volgende:
Dit is offtopic, het ging over hypocriete wildersesque poltici die stiekem best wel goed met hun allochtone buurman om kunnen gaan, maar hun visie daar niet op aanpassen.

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Op vrijdag 2 maart 2007 23:34 schreef Reya het volgende:
Ik kan me aan de ene kant wel voorstellen dat het wat paradoxaal op mensen overkomt als mensen hetgeen wat ze bepleiten weinig zelf blijken na te volgen; aan de andere kant gaat het echter primair om de inhoud van het pleit, niet om de persoon van de boodschapper. In die zin vind ik het wat flauw om bijv. Al Gore aan te vallen op zijn energieverbruik, aangezien Gore vooral de populaire voorman is van een zekere abstracte beweging, en imo zou de discussie zich op de inhoudelijke boodschap moeten richten, en niet op de persoon van Gore.

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Bovendien, hoe ver vindt je dat daarin moet worden gegaan? Mogen D66-ers niet benoemd worden als burgemeester? Mogen VVD-ers geen uitkering trekken? Mogen GroenLinksers geen auto rijden? (om maar wat cliche voorbeelden te noemen) Uiteindelijk is het voor de meeste mensen lastig - zoniet onmogelijk - om hun eigen geboden ook compleet na te leven.

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Op vrijdag 2 maart 2007 23:42 schreef Lemmeb het volgende:
Het toppunt van van hypocrisie vind ik nog steeds Wouter Bos die op de ene dag mensen wil verplichten hun koter op een zwarte school te laten verzieken, om vervolgens op de andere dag zijn eigen koter aan te melden op het witste schooltje dat je maar in Amsterdam vinden kunt.

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Op vrijdag 2 maart 2007 23:45 schreef Lemmeb het volgende:
True. Maar ook helemáál hypocriet.

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Op zaterdag 3 maart 2007 00:17 schreef Evil_Jur het volgende:
Ik poep op idealisten.