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  Apparent hypocrisy may not actually be hypocrisy

      Let's say that Al Gore travels even 5  million miles per year in a pollution-generating vehicle, to spread his message.  If his doing so results in 250 million people cutting back on their discretionary travel by 1000 miles per year, thereby saving a total of 250 billion miles of polluting travel by others, then Al Gore has had a HUGE POSITIVE net effect on the environment overall, in spite of his so-called hypocrisy in not having below-average carbon emissions himself for now.

      Sometimes a speaker in Congress has to say, "Please be quiet everyone, because I'm giving a speech now and not being quiet myself!", or a basketball coach has to say, "I'm standing on the sidelines, NOT handling the basketball at all, but you guys need to go out on the floor and handle the basketball a lot!"  This is NOT hypocrisy: it is simply the reality that leaders have different functions than the audience they are leading at that time.

      The true test of hypocrisy or integrity is what Al Gore does during his personal non-traveling hours, in terms of cutting back personal carbon emissions, and planting trees and creating other carbon offsets, assuming he has time to do that now without losing a few billion tons of carbon dioxide reductions as a result of persuading others.  I don't know Al, but I suspect that he strives to act consistently with his message-- in other words, I believe he is passionate, driven, and sincere.    --Kent

      On Peter Schweitzer, Al Gore, and hypocrisy posted 2 years, 10 months ago 12 Responses