In which we at long last define “Rhinocrisy”
posted by saurabh in Hot Hot Hot Hot, Rhinocrisy, What Is To Be Done |I’ve spent the morning getting mad about Al Gore.
It seems that soon after Al received his Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth”, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research released a report about his profligate consumption:
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.
Now, this is an absurd amount of power. Reportedly Al Gore’s house is 10,000 square feet (data not shown), which is maybe twice or three times the size of my house, depending on how you reckon things. I live in a northern clime, so presumably our consumption in this eight-person household should be much greater than in Tennessee. So I’m not clear what, exactly, Gore might be doing to burn so much power, and that makes me suspect there’s a little more to this story. But, be that as it may…
This story was widely reported with great glee across the blogospore, with many pointing out that since Mr. Gore was such an unmitigated tool, he was in no position to tell them what to do.
[Pause for dramatic sigh.]
This blog is called “Rhinocrisy”, for reasons of fancy more than anything else. But it behooves us to reflect for a moment on our sister-word, hypocrisy. The moment will be brief, and we will use it to say only this: hypocrisy is not important.
We’ve had precious little reflection on hypocrisy, here. I have always firmly believed that one bears responsibility for one’s own behavior. I attribute this to my Hindu upbringing, which inculcated in me the idea of “dharma”, which Spike Lee translated quite well: do the right thing. That’s all. So it doesn’t matter whether someone else says one thing and does another, or whether you yourself can’t reconcile your speech and actions. The balance of your sins is determined simply by whether you did the right thing, plain and simple. Whether or not Al Gore is a sinner has no bearing on your own sin, or on your right to sin. The Dude said it clearly two thousand years ago:
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)
So, when we speak of “rhinocrisy”, we mean to say: failure to do the right thing.
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partial agreement on the hipocrisy idea, generally. it depends how close we’re getting to “i’m lying so that i can rob you.” which is of course the most common meme about global warming on the hoax side, the record-high profits for environmentalists angle.
that think tank… i think that’s the first time i ever remember seeing one of those vaunted state-level ‘winger operations strike a national-level blow. i knew they were out there, like i know there are manta rays.
what did i see. a blog entry? something along the lines of:
a) cheney’s house is 5-10x that consumption.
b) both of the couple’s offices are in that house.
c) they’ve already done a lot of efficiency work on it!
i think what disturbs me about all this is how it shows that gore has already compromised significantly. he’s taking a very pro-industry stance, which has many good aspects, in terms of getting concessions, but it has the bad aspects that you’re looking for future technology to solve current problems, without fully acknowledging the current gap between capacity and need.
it also shows, we’re just gonna have a horrible horrible time with the per-capita idea. already we’re looking at china and development from the wrong angle. when we get around to patting ourselves on the back for making heavy relative gains, per country, we’ll be forcing other folks to stay living in slums because they can’t either get back out to the country or build infrastructure.
this is really gonna piss us off, this. we are so not at another bretton woods/marshall plan moment in our national life.
One of the reasons this bill is so high is because he buys power only from alternative energy sources.
The dollar amount of bill is not as significant as the number of kWh consumed. He’s clearly eating up a lot of power. I imagine he’s got some sort of large electromagnetic dynamo running in his basement, which he uses to suck the life-force from pigs and horses.
Actually, he probably simply has business operations housed on his property. Nothing sucks up power like servers and computing equipment. You can debate ad nauseum about how proper or improper his power consumption is on that front, but making a straight edge comparison between him and the average doesn’t-work-at-home American seems like bad analysis.
I would also wonder at your assumption that a northern clime house should take up less power than a southern clime house. Heating is a much more efficient process than cooling, and the South uses up plenty of electricity on AC. August was probably the worst month, energy wise, hence it being picked for the critique. The real question is–how many people are living and working in that house at that time? (You divide the house up into shifts—presumably more people are there, working, during the day, then are there, sleeping, at night) and compare on a percapita@thattime basis. If he’s sitting and working at home during the day when the average American leaves the house and has fewer gadgets running, and there are more people requiring more cooling, then that might also explain some of the discrepancy.
Or maybe he’s running a giant cloning tesla coil and has massive plasma screens on all day. Who knows. My problem with criticisms of hypocrisy is they frequently are made with partial knowledge. The Puranas are full of stories of some king or sage who seemed to be doing a good deed to external observers, but was actually doing a foul one, and vice versa. Gore would be a more effective messenger if he woul defend himself, but he’s not, and on the whole, that does not change the truth of his basic message at all. It’s a prima facie ad hominem attack. (Mmm, Latin.) Therefore it should be ignored in this context. It would be relevant if he was running, but he’s not–yet–and his ideas and data are, and it has nothing to do with those.
And I’ve already bitched and moaned on this site at great length about the dangers of pursuing consistency to death. To pull out another Hindu reference–the Gita is full of try-your-best instructions. Ideals are prescribed, immediately followed by next-best ideals, immediately followed by next-best ideals. That’s a very portable approach to ideals, regardless of religion, because it allows us to hold ourselves upto higher standards without killing ourselves or shirking away from too-high-standards.
Nice touch with the whole Spike Lee thing.
After reading it all, I’m unsure who you’re mad at — the Gores or their critics? Given a choice between annoying people, I say let’s forget the individuals and look at what they’re saying and doing on the global stage. Gore has probably done more to reduce energy use worldwide than any other single thinker other than maybe Amory Lovins or Jimmy Carter. Compare that to his critics — a bunch of ankle-biters with nothing to offer except ad hominem attacks.
Speaking of which: I found it curious that in 2005, per the group’s tax return, viewable at Guidestar.org, they paid $48,000 in salaries (and neglected to include the names of their paid staff or board of directors, normally required on these forms); now they have 9 staff and 12 scholars, per their Web site. Sounds like they hit a jackpot in the funding world! Now why would some right-wing funder want to pump up a group in Tennessee and help it grow by at least an order of magnitude in less than 2 years? Why indeed?
hedgy that should be a post. i haven’t seen that anywhere else.
oppo oppo oppo!
that is how we win!
dirty hands, dirty pants,
dirty tricks, and spin!
GO-O-O-O, ‘WINGERS!
i am a fan of al gore’s. i think he’s a treasure, to the point where i think his life is in danger.
it is also true that his pro-industry-ness scares me. i believe we should be talking about what systems we’re going to be taking offline until they’re safe. emphasizing technological fixes, even future ones, gives chicken legislators cover to agree on bad fixes now because the future versions of those fixes are desirable.