Eric's Beijing Diary

I saw it first on MSN, then there was a big splash in the China Daily. Now the Wall Street Journal has decided to weigh in on the issue. The issue of which I speak is the discussion about Al Gore's extravagant lifestyle. The story was broken by a Tennessee non-profit. Apparently he uses something like 20 times the national average. The Wall Street Journal is saying the the natural gas bill for heating his swimming pool is $500 a month.

Al Gore's hypocrisy should not be a surprise. Gore is an American liberal, and the liberals are elitists by nature. They believe that they have been anointed by God to care for the poor and downtrodden, so they hold themselves to a different standard from the masses. When Clinton was president and Gore was vice president, there was a proposal for "midnight basketball" as a deterrent to crime in the inner cities. During this time, Gore was asked if he would want his children to be out in the streets playing basketball at midnight. Gore said, "That is not a fair question." Why isn't it fair? In a liberal's mind, it isn't fair because the "caretaker" is not to be judged by the same standards as the masses under his care.

But while I am critical of Gore's hypocrisy, I also have a problem with his critics. While the movie had a lot of pulp, it did address the issue of rising carbon dioxide levels. Gore deserves credit for bringing this to national attention, and it is a question that demands to be answered. If, in fact, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is slowly but steadily elevating, then it doesn't take much of a scientist to understand that the average global temperatures are going to go up.