Al Gore's personal energy use

Looks like my stomach flu made me miss a bit of blog bantering yesterday. The basic gist is that a "non-partisan" group had a gotcha ready to roll out shortly after Al Gore's Oscar win.

It's true, his mansion does consume an enormous amount of energy. As do most mansions. A few thoughts follow:

First, a number of right-wing blogs have faulted him for not installing solar panels quickly enough. As far as I can tell, since the mansion is in Tennessee, and as of now Tennessee has no net metering laws, he simply can't install too many electricity production alternatives at his home. Without net-metering to distribute the excess production into the grid and draw from the grid when his on-site production is low, the number of solar panels he can install has to be well below the total consumption of his home. The next best thing for Gore to do is purchase his electricity needs from "green" producers to the greatest extent possible, which is what he's doing.

Secondly, it's true that Bush's Crawford ranch has a micro-geothermal unit installed. I heard about that a long time ago, and it's great that he has that. Why doesn't Al Gore's home? Beats me. It's possible that his site is not amenable to that sort of thing, there's nothing to suggest that he can or cannot install one of those either way. The fact remains, though, that this is somewhat of a free-market choice of his and George W Bush' and all I can add is this observation:

Curiously, the “free market” think tank that gives us our first link declares that Gore’s free choice to use his own money to offset his family’s carbon output makes him a “hypocrite,” since he thinks global warming is bad. This may seem odd, but perusing the Hit & Run comment thread from which I got the above links will clarify: libertarians believe in principles, and one of the most important principles is

AL GORE SUCKS AND IS FAT FAT FAT!!!!

Therefore anything he does is wrong. I believe this is explained somewhere in the works of Ludwig von Mises.