Go Green or Go Home

I visited Foxnews.com yesterday and discovered an alarming news video. It was entitled, Not-So-Green Gore? I watched the whole video through, and really listened to what the right-winged news station had to say. Almost immediately my “Bullshit Alarm” went off. John Gibson’s “The Big Story” segment of Fox News is claiming that at Al Gore’s Tennessee mansion consumes twenty times as much energy in a year than an average American household does in one year. Fox News is known for its right-wing agenda and I’m not surprised that they decided to bash Gore. Right off the bat, he is a prime target for scrutiny and anything Gore does environmentally will be under inquiry. You don’t see Fox News going in depth into the Bush Administration asking any questions about his War in the East do you?

The choice of words that Gibson uses in this segment is astonishing as well. He says that Gore wants people to hop on his “Green Band Wagon”. Using these words is showing the viewers that this is just a trend and it if you do not go green then it's not a big deal. It’s like saying, “Hop on the blonde hair band wagon”, or “Hop on the Doritos band wagon” With those simple words they trivialized Gore’s hard work on the global warming crisis.

Gibson asks the question, “What is Gore doing to make a different, apparently he talks a lot.” The following will be dripping with sarcasm: Um…Hello? I think Gore created this documentary, I think it was about Global Warming. I do also remember hearing somewhere that he travels all over the world to give his lecture about the crisis of global warming. You can’t tell me that Gore isn’t doing anything to make a difference, the very fact that you’re talking about him is because of the documentary, so Gibson, you’ve heard of it?

Next Gibson introduces Drew Johnson the president of the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research. Gibson asks him to explain the allegations against Gore. Johnson does not talk about anything else but the fact that Gore uses twenty times as much energy as an average household does in a year and that Gore is a hypocrite. Near the end of the segment between Johnson and Gibson:

Gibson: Is there something Green that Gore is doing that you and I are not discussing?

Johnson: Not that I can see.

Are you kidding me? Again, they are assuming that Gore has all this knowledge about how to reduce carbon emissions and you act like he does not do them. Johnson and Gibson are muddling the facts, what is an average household anyways? Because of Gore I know about the global warming crisis and now so do billions of people all over the world. Again I ask, is that not being green? You can’t tell me that that’s not green enough for ya Gibson.

Johnson then mentions Gore’s carbon credits are, “a way for him to buy his way out of his own guilt”. In response to this Gore brought on Laura Swartz, a democratic strategist. She explains exactly what Gore does, he calculates carbon footprint which means how much carbon his house emits, and offset the rest that can’t be cut back, because not everything can be. It’s not electricity, it’s CARBON EMMISIONS. Swartz explains it, and Johnson just ends the segments by saying that he has to look up what she just told him. Basically, Gore is doing everything he can, and they were just stooped.

Max’s Final Thought

Why does Fox need to bash Gore personally? Does this prove that global warming isn’t happening? Does this mean that the ice caps won’t melt and that we should all buy Hummers? If what Gibson is accusing Gore of is in fact is true, and Gore does emit a ton of carbon emission into the atmosphere (which in fact Fox News did NOT prove, but we’ll use this argument to make a point) does this mean that we could just forget about the problem of global warming and just sit back, relax and wait for the earth to warm up? Does this mean that all the hard work Gore has done for this cause should go unwarranted because John Gibson claims that Gore is a hypocrite? No, Fox News has proved nothing of the sort; Gibson actually accused Gore of something that he in fact did not even understand.

Gibson would do better to take a good look at the wonderful job Bush is doing to save the world and comment on that, because isn’t Bush using troops for his own fight for oil or something like that? John Gibson and Drew Johnson should watch Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and then make sure that they understand what carbon is before they try to bash the man who is undoubtedly trying to save the world.

References:

Fox News: John Gibson’s “The Big Story”
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?022707/022707_big_gore2&Big_Story&Not-So-Green%20Gore%3F&acc&Politics&-1&News&387&&&new