Investor’s Business Daily: Al Gore’s Climate Change Hypocrisy Is As Big As His Energy-Sucking Mansion

Inconvenient Truth: In a recent interview, Al Gore claimed that he lives a “carbon free lifestyle.” The electricity bills for his home in Tennessee say otherwise.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Gore to respond to charges that he’s a climate hypocrite. “This is a criticism we hear from conservatives all the time when talking about people like you or Elon Musk or Leonardo DiCaprio,” Tapper said, “that you, yourself, have a large carbon footprint.”

Gore’s response was “Well, I don’t have a private jet. And what carbon emissions come from my trips on Southwest Airlines are offset. I live a carbon-free lifestyle, to the maximum extent possible.”

The maximum extent possible? Really? Then how does Gore explain the rather large amounts of electricity he uses to power his 10,000-plus-square-foot home.

A new analysis by the National Center for Public Policy Research found that Gore’s Tennessee home “guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.”

In one month last year, the report found, Gore’s home consumed more electricity than the average family uses in 34 months.

The electricity used just to heat Gore’s swimming pool would power six homes for a year.

And this is after Gore spent tens of thousands of dollars installing “green” upgrades, which he was embarrassed into doing when his energy-hogging home first came to light a decade ago.

In fact, according to the NCPPR report, Gore’s home used more electricity last year than it did in 2007, before he installed all those energy-reducing features.

So where does his “carbon free” boast come from?

Gore says he buys “carbon offsets” to account for all the CO2 his home and lifestyle produce. For example, he pays $432 a month into a “Green Power Switch” program that helps fund renewable energy projects in Tennessee.

But buying offsets is a highly controversial way to assuage climate guilt.

Over the years, a number of “climate offset” groups have sprung up, claiming that people can erase their carbon footprints simply by writing a check for a few hundred dollars.

While some groups are on the up and up, there are a lot of scammers out there, as the Atlantic discovered when it investigated. “International law enforcement authorities and environmental advocates say that the carbon markets are extremely vulnerable to financial fraudsters,” the in-depth article explained. “Their shell games can also be hard to spot.”

Beyond that, it’s not entirely clear that legitimate “offset” programs are actually offsetting whatever Al Gore is producing.

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