Power: Gore Mansion Uses 20x Average Household

ThumbingMyWay32 wrote:

Owning such a large house is a matter of choice; not a burden he's forced to accept. Parts of his documentary were filmed while guzzling fuel at an obscene rate in his private jetliner. Other parts while touring the nation in gas guzzling SUVs and limos. What we have here is a failure to communicate. Except here, he's having trouble understanding his own rhetoric.

funny how eager you are to nail al gore on this yet give a free pass to multi-millionaires who made their fortunes via televangelism. isn't someone turning a huge profit on someone who endlessly preached against the wealthy and encouraged his followers to give up what they had to follow him just as bad, if not worse?

farfromglorified wrote:

Environmentalists, in an extremely generalized sense, have long fought a battle against what many of them see to be the cause of mankind's ills: technology. They established the battle lines long ago by creating a false moral separation between the inventions of man and the inventions of Nature, making the formal a moral negative and the latter a moral positive. This morality has permeated our culture to a very dangerous level, and has led to a duplicitous view of technology by the common man.

When we damn technology, we damn our primary means of survival as a species. Some people, however, do not agree with that. They believe that mankind would be more "Natural" and hence better-off without technology.

Global warming, in the political sphere, is simply the latest battleground in this fight. Whether or not the science is valid has largely become an irrelevancy to both sides. If those who believe technology to be evil win this fight, they will win the prize they have long been seeking: control of your primary means of survival. This represents the second and second-to-last salvo in any political conquest, following controlling your food and short of controlling your mind.

Is that enough elaboration for you? Or would you like some more

since when is environmentalism anti-technology? from what i understand, they're huge advocates of advancing technology. we've remained stagnant for quite a while now due to profits and influence by those who control curent technology AND the means of innovation. the environmentalists seem to want us to do more research and advance beyind fossil fuel technology to renewable technology. not sure where you get this idea that they are fighting a war against technology. their war is to make our technology smarter and with less side effects. what is unreasonable about that?

as to controlling our food, the eco-people lost that one already. very few people in this country have any control over their food and if anyone controls it it is moneyed interests. i try not to think about the hormones, pesticides, and preservatives being injected into our food supply cos it makes me paranoid... in fact, im gonna put these canned peaches back into my fridge now and go be sick

farfromglorified wrote:

The instant it declares the manufacture of men absolutely evil and the manufacture of Nature absolutely good. Most "environmentalists" are not completely this way. However, many hold onto positions they've copped from others that require such axioms.

The post above made a very large generalization, and I owned up to that.

Hehe....the "means of innovation" is a brain. And "profits" aren't what make things stagnant, they're what keep things moving. And "influence" is the primary business of people like Al Gore.

There are certainly many people who want us to do more research and advance. However, most of them mean "someone else" when they say "us".

Hehe....

When I said "controlling our food" I meant proclaiming ownership of land on the state-level, the core foundation of the nation-state, not the FDA.

the means of innovation might be the human brain, but let's be real, you need capital and equipment for that kind of research and technology innovation. most of that capital and resources is held by industries that have a very vested interest in making sure such innovation does NOT take place because they make most of their profits off the current technology. it's a cultural problem: unwillingess to make short term sacrifice for long-term gain. in this specific case, lower profits to invest in technology that could put them on top in the long run is not an option becos those low profits might kill company stock before they ever get a chance to turn that profit. it's why america is losing a lot of ground to places like china and japan, who are much more willing to look at the long-term when choosing investments. profits neither make things stagnant nor do they drive innovation. this is why i say profits ensure stagnation. the people who are making the profits don't want to risk losing any and thus won't support anything that might entail a temporary hit on profits.

i havent seen inconvenient truth, so i dont know what environmental policies it recommends, but it sounds to me like its focus is on individuals reducing their use and buying smart. i dont see what problem you would have for this given your love of the free market? i get the feeling a lot of the environmental movement is changing people's minds and creating a demand for eco-friendly practices. is there anything wrong with that?