One for my Canadian friends... 10 Questions For Al Gore Written by Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, November 25 2013. cartoon gore home depotAl Gore blew in and out of Toronto last week, praising Premier Kathleen Wynne for banning the use of coal to generate electricity in Ontario starting in 2014, and, as usual, refusing to take questions from the media. Here are 10 questions I’d ask Al Gore: (1) In 2009, you visited Toronto to praise former premier Dalton McGuinty for his Green Energy Act, describing it as “widely recognized now as the single best green energy program on the North American continent.” What do you have to say in light of the December, 2011 report by the non-partisan Auditor General of Ontario that McGuinty wasted billions of public dollars on renewable energy by rushing into it with no business plan, no auditing of expenditures, and by ignoring the advice of his government’s own energy experts on how to reduce costs? (2) What do you have to say about the fact the McGuinty government’s multi-billion-dollar deal with South Korea’s Samsung corporation for wind and solar power, which it described as the crowning jewel of its green energy initiatives, was never put out to public tender? (3) What do you have to say about the Auditor General’s finding that McGuinty’s claim his Green Energy Act would create 50,000 jobs over three years was a myth, and that the province would likely suffer a net job loss because of the higher cost of electricity, resulting from the massive public subsidies given to wind and solar power companies? (4) McGuinty’s Green Energy Act, the legislation you praised in 2009, took away the planning rights of local municipalities to have any say in the location of industrial wind turbines in their communities. Do you think taking away the rights of citizens to have any say about whether industrial wind turbines will be located in their communities is just? (5) Earlier this year in an interview with the Globe and Mail you described Canada’s development of the oil sands as the equivalent of treating the atmosphere like an “open sewer.” What do you have to say about the findings of Canadian climate scientist and lead UN IPCC author Andrew Weaver, and his colleague Neal Swart, published in the journal Nature, that even if Canada developed all the commercially viable oil in the oilsands, global temperatures would rise by an insignificant 0.03 degrees? (6) You constantly condemn coal, oil and natural gas companies for not caring about the planet, or about the existential threat you say man-made climate change poses to humanity. And yet earlier this year you sold your Current TV network to Al Jazeera, which is backed by the oil and natural gas rich Arab emirate of Qatar, for $500 million, including a reported personal profit for you of $70 million. How much did you actually make from this deal and weren’t you being hypocritical by selling out to fossil fuel interests that you yourself condemn? (7) Why, when you were vice-president of the United States, and campaigning globally for the Kyoto accord, did you and then president Bill Clinton, never make any attempt to have the U.S. ratify Kyoto, thus bringing it into force? (8) Now that you’re out of politics, you have repeatedly urged countries in the developed world like the U.S. and Canada to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of whether developing countries like China and India agree to do so. Why then, when you were vice-president of the United States and actually in a position to show leadership in getting the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions independently of the developing world, did you state publicly in 1997 that: “We will not submit (Kyoto) for ratification until there’s meaningful participation by key developing nations”? (9) While you preach energy austerity for others to save the planet from catastrophic man-made climate change, you personally live a luxurious, jet-setting, carbon dioxide-consuming lifestyle. You own multi-million-dollar homes and constantly jet around the world, leaving a huge carbon footprint on the planet compared to the average American or Canadian. Isn’t telling others to “do as I say, not as I do,” the classic definition of hypocrisy? (10) Specifically on the issue of flying, Mr. Gore, isn’t that according to your view one of worst things you can do to the planet? In that context, how did you get to Toronto today and how will you be leaving it?
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:59:48 +0000
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