A Paltry Defense of Gore's Hypocrisy

As stunning as it sounds, feminazi Amanda plunged with alacrity to defend Al Gore from charges of hypocrisy from wingnuts. And, seeing how I wrote about this already, I'll take some of my oh so precious time to rebut her. She writes:

The very notion that Gore is a hypocrite when the issue is something that has nothing to do with personal virtue and everything to do with collective action just goes to show how badly it f__s people up when religion and politics get intertwined.

Yeah, I know this doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand, but it's interesting anyway. With Amanda, the reason people oppose her on anything always comes down to 1) her being a women and 2) her opponents being religious. And no, it doesn't make any sense.

Making environmentalism a modern day version of puritanical abstention doesn’t do much to actually help the planet. Carbon taxes would make a difference.

Ah, the ubiquitous liberal solution. Whenever a problem presents itself state that people are helpless to do anything on their own; thus the government must step in to save the day. Hooray. At least she realizes that taxes provide a disincentive to use a certain product. If Amanda wasn't wholly incapable of reasoning, she might, in Steve Forbes form, come out in favor of the flat tax. Anyway, two points:

First, this is a good example of why liberalism is so disdainful. Liberals have discovered a problem which many conservatives don't believe to be problematic, to wit, the role of human beings in causing the globe to warm. Instead of taking the higher road and using fewer and fewer of the nefarious fruits of the Industrial Revolution which have, allegedly, contributed to the supposed problem, they whine for the government to do something. This is, at the very least, annoying and adolescent. But so is liberalism.

Second, why do we trust the government to do something about this problem? I reckon it's their clean record when it comes to the War on Drugs. Yes sir, the government can't so anything when it comes to eradicating, or even mitigating poverty, but it sure as heck can stop humans from destroying themselves with their durned SUVs. In all likelihood, corporations will be allowed to burn more fossil fuels than the rest of us, so we can keep the plutocracy going strong. Meanwhile, the rest of us will have to use the bus for transportation.

Back to the lady who will have to ride the short bus:

Gore should probably do more personally if his bills are indeed that high, but on the whole, it’s hardly relevant compared to the huge amount of work that he’s done advocating for a collective response... Calling Al Gore a hypocrite and deciding this excuses your SUV-driving doesn’t change the facts; the planet will still fry even as your conscience is clear because you called Gore a hypocrite. Even if Al Gore were the highest carbon emitter on the planet, this would not change the truth about global warming one bit.

As for the first point, getting the word out isn't doing anything. Seriously, it's next to irrelevant. And only leftist pseudo-intellectuals could think that whining about a problem is equivalent to doing something about it. Witness Marx, who wrote and wrote, but never personally contributed to the unification of the workers of the world.

Second, it's exasperating when the people who claim we have a problem not only do nothing to eradicate said problem, but actually contribute further to it. If you think a problem is serious, you have to treat it seriously. Al Gore may speak seriously, but his actions don't exactly suggest that if we do nothing, we'll all die. If he really believes that, he's going to need to cut back just a little. Until the Henny-Pennys who cry to government do something personally about the fact that the sky is falling, I'm going to find it awfully hard to care.