Ninth Stage

You’ve probably read that Al Gore’s Belle Meade mansion home uses twice as much electricity in a month as the average home does in a year.  And you’ve probably read that the Gore family paid an average of $1359 for electricity and $1080 for natural gas every month last year.  But have you ever calculated your carbon emmissions?

I followed Al Gore’s advice and went to the Inconvenient Truth website (warning: autostarting PPS with audio) and used their calculator to find the extent of my “carbon crimes”,  needless to say it’s less than the Gore family’s.

It got amusing when I tried to calculate the Gore family’s “carbon crimes” - you can enter monthly bills on up to $1500 for heating oil and propane but you can enter no more than $500 for electricity and natural gas!  It’s impossible to use the Inconvenient Truth Carbon Calculater to compute the Gore family’s “environmental” impact.  Coincidence?  You decide.

Another cutsie bug/undocumented feature at the Carbon Calculator - The CC says that the average American’s carbon emissions equal 7.5 tons while other sources put it at 19 tons.  Is the Inconvenient Truth website deliberately trying to guilt us no matter how well we do?  The two people in my household together emit less than 19 tons, below average by world standards but guilty as charged according to an Inconvenient Truth.