Alternate title: "The Emperor Has No Sweater"

I heard a trucker ranting on the CB this week about former Vice President Al Gore's electric bill. When I started asking him about it, he said Gore's bill "was something like $20,000 a year." I started laughing and said bullshit. Nobody has a $20,000/year electric bill, right? Gore's fighting to reverse the effects of global warming, right? Turns out I owe that driver an apology. It was $29,268 for 2006.

Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore's environmental hypocrisy.

Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.

Wait, isn't this the same guy that's flying around the country on jets telling the rest of us poor bastards not to fly around the country on jets, and to put on a sweater instead of turning up the thermostat?

Wanna hear the worst part? The Gore's electric usage is going up, not down, from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

"If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care," says the Center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. "But he tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules."

Scoffed a former Gore adviser in response: "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent."

Or least effective, depending on how you look at it.

Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for the Gores, did not dispute the Center's figures, taken as they were from public records. But she pointed out that both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home and she argued that "the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it."

It's because Al and Tipper both work out of their home? What the hell are they doing?!? Building Queen Mary cruise ships? Is Al manufacturing gigantic Tesla coils for fun?

A carbon footprint is a calculation of the CO2 fossil fuel emissions each person is responsible for, either directly because of his or her transportation and energy consumption or indirectly because of the manufacture and eventual breakdown of products he or she uses. (You can calculate your own carbon footprint on the website www.carbonfootprint.com

The vice president has done that, Kreider argues, and the family tries to offset that carbon footprint by purchasing their power through the local Green Power Switch program — electricity generated through renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas, which create less waste and pollution. "In addition, they are in the midst of installing solar panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power," Kreider added. "They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures and then they purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero."

Uh-huh. Seems they missed a bulb or two. Or someone forgot to turn off the light in the bathroom. And what's up with buying "carbon offsets"? Drew Johnson of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, the think tank that broke the story, called these offsets a way of "buying his way out of his guilt." That's exactly right! These offsets don't do shit to reverse global warming. You can't unpollute the environment. That's like trying to unfuck a pregnant girl.

These efforts did little to impress Johnson. "I appreciate the solar panels," he said, "but he also has natural gas lanterns in his yard, a heated pool, and an electric gate. While I appreciate that he's switching out some light bulbs, he is not living the lifestyle that he advocates."

Bingo.

Kreider says she's confident that the Gores' utility bills will decrease. "They bought an older home and they're in the process of upgrading the home," she said. "Unfortunately that means an increase in energy use in order to have an overall decrease in energy use down the road."

Makes sense to me. Err, wait ... no it doesn't. That Kool-Aid tastes like shit to me. They're using $500 a month worth of natural gas to heat their poolhouse? OldGuy's family used 993 kilowatt-hours of electricity last month, and the Gores are using an average of 18,414 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month - 18.543806646525679758308157099698 times as much energy. Hey, my kids didn't even know the light switches had an "off" position until just recently. How did Gore end up being the spokesbullshitter for energy conservation? I demand a recount!

Look ... pollution is one thing, but panic is another. Should we be doing things as "cleanly" as possible? Hell yes. You clean up after yourself elsewhere, don't ya? Please tell me you flush ... but if Gore's gonna make a living off of this global warming mania, the least he can do is walk the walk too. Don't feed me bullshit about buying carbon offsets cuz there's no such thing. Don't tell me to take public transportation while you're flying around the country in a private jet. Don't tell me you live in an older inefficient home when there's 20 rooms and 8 bathrooms. All that's just hypocritical.

I listen to talk radio alot, and one of the hosts on Sirius Radio's "Left" liberal channel totally dismissed this story. He said this is just an attack on Gore, and nothing more. Can't be true, he said. Gore's electric bills can't be obtained by making a phone call. But that's just not true. Every home I've ever lived in, I've called the utility company first to find out how good or bad the average utility usage is. Every home. Not once has the utility company told me I can't have that information. When I was a kid, my grandpa would tell "it costs alot to heat the outside" every time we'd forget to slam the door shut going in or out of the house.

There's no debate on global warming. Do some digging and you'll see what I mean. The same people telling you that you need to put on a sweater and ride a bike to work can't answer why there have been six major climate changes in the world's history, or what caused them. These are the same people that would've told you the earth was flat without looking at all the evidence. And that's exactly what they're doing now.

My latest hobby is global warming research. I believe in global warming - something is going on - but I'm less willing to say it's all because of that time I turned the thermostat up back in 1910. I plan to do a rant on it when I'm finished, but here's a teaser for ya: As "Deep Throat" told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, "Follow the money."

Just for fun, take a Prozac and read the rest, and don't miss the Wall Street Journal's article An Inconvenient Pool.