Al Gore and Personal Virtue

As the clothesline guy (it goes deeper than that, I hope), I am deeply concerned that our political leaders and Vice-President Gore will continue to sell the American people on the idea that we can continue to live the same way with no "sacrifice" and no change in lifestyle. A change does not have to equal a diminution in standard of living. This is one precept that must be conquered...with urgency. The time is ripe.

The Gore Q&A from his website (We Can Solve It) states, "When we use the microwave or plug in a coffee maker, our electricity system will function just like it does today, but behind the scenes, it will look and function quite differently and [sic] much cleaner."

Slow Food movement aside, what the microwave has enabled for our culture is problematic. See http://pewresearch.org/pubs/323/luxury-or-necessity. Importing more coffee than anything else but oil has a high cost (http://www.packagedfacts.com/Coffee-RTD-Ready-895867/) on the environment. This talking point, therefore, suggests that the people who are answering questions on the electric policy end are not talking to the people who work on personal actions.

The suggestions at We Can Solve It (Minimize Your Impact), although they do not include hanging clothes to dry, are good; however, they always seem to be the low-priority for mention by the Vice-President. In fact, he is often quoted to say: "We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift." While I do whole-heartedly agree that we need policy to shift, we must also carry out coordinated (as opposed to isolated) personal actions and that will only happen when there is Leadership By Example, when the important solutions are not an afterthought that roll with the credits.

Barack Obama continues to talk about turning off the cell phones and putting away the video games, which I told his policy adviser, Cassandra Potts, on the day prior to the NH Primary, was really his only mailer that resonated with me during our primary season. This is one of the only examples I can think of where a political leader is being concrete about what we need to do to adjust the way we live (and, unfortunately, he is not talking about the environment overtly when he brings this up to the NAACP or others). This is the kind of leadership we need to see from Gore and others, including our governors and mayors. Also unfortunately, any talk about lifestyle change is dismissed by liberals as oppressive and libertarians as prescriptive. It can fall like a lead balloon, unless done right.

People are hungry for the national environmental organizations to stop dickering over whether it is Priuses or solar panels that are the silver bullet. Options for early adopters with silver spoons must not be the only items on a checklist of options that "the rest of us" can start to adopt. More importantly, we can ill afford to have "Minimize Your Own Impact" always be the last item on the list.