Although I appreciate the efforts of DiCaprio and others, I find it sad that others cannot be so environmentally conscious as these celebrities because of the expense and inconvenience that it imposes. The cost of envionmentally efficient technology, such as automobiles, is prohibitive for most Americans. Wouldn't it be great, if either the cost was more nominal, or the government helped us afford them with tax incentives or rebates. We are still ruled by what the large automakers dictate as well as the Oil Industry. I don't see that changing anytime soon with the current administration in place.

Too little, too late. I bet you won't catch them on the public airways anytime soon or on city buses. Why? Because they fly on private jets and drive - or are driven in - their own vehicles. Sean Hannity provided an interesting juxtaposition of these environmental activists on his Sunday weekend show last week. Check out the carbon footprint of private passenger air transportation with the public airways.

Uh, yeah, and the celebrities jump onto any bandwagon they can to get publicity. Also, they either get these cars for free to endorse them or they buy a dozen just to prove they can. Sorry, the celebrity route would be my main reason not to get involved because many are out there for self-promotion. Does Leo have an electric jet to carry him around too, how about solar panels on his house? Hmmm.......so much for environmentally friendly stars. :-(

Oh the hypocrisy of it all...

The Hollywood elite will get out from in front of the camera and jump in their private jets and cars that in no way resemble what will be portrayed at the Oscars.

Flying in a private jet does more than four times the carbon emission damage to the environment than flying a regular commercial jet. So if you were worried about your quote-unquote "carbon footprint" on the environment, and if you are concerned about carbon neutrality, the last thing that you should be doing is flying on private jets. Sit in coach, you might save a polar bear.

How does Al Gore fit into this equation?

During the 2000 campaign when Al Gore was running to be president of the United States and along the way giving speeches about the environment, the former vice president traveled on private planes more than a few times. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the Gore campaign filed disbursement reports with the Federal Elections Commission, as required law, that document his use of private jets belonging to various businesses and corporations.

The filings, which are publicly accessible, they reveal that during the period of January of 1999 and January of 2000, Gore reimbursed five groups and corporations for 16 flights on private jets. It is two of these dates that caught our attention.

On January 27th, 2000, Gore campaign in Concord and Manchester, New Hampshire, and on that very same day reimbursed the Thomas Lee Company $1,400 for the use of their corporate jet. That evening he left New Hampshire and flew back to Washington aboard Air Force Two, the vice president's official plane is a 757, which means that the flight from New Hampshire to Washington, well, the vice president emitted more than 22,000 pounds of CO2.

Oh the hypocrisy of it all.....

I'd love to see this!
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2007/02/22/3653993.html

February 22, 2007

Let 'em live like common people
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN

I applaud the many rock stars and other celebrities who are helping former U.S. vice-president Al Gore stage seven "Live Earth" concerts around the world on July 7, to alert us to the dangers of global warming.

As long as every one of these Captain Kyotos signs the following pledge:

"I (insert name here) accept that as a multi-millionaire who has profited enormously from our consumer-driven culture, I have become a poster (insert gender here) boy/girl for excessive and conspicuous consumption, and that I am therefore disproportionately responsible for man-made global warming.

"I promise to take the following steps immediately, both to set an example to others and to reduce my carbon imprint on the Earth.

(1) Since cars are a major contributor to global warming, I will sell all the vehicles I own, donating the proceeds to a worthy environmental charity and replace them with one car -- a small hybrid with no air conditioning. Of course I will take public transit whenever possible.

(2) Since houses are major emitters of greenhouse gases, I will sell all the mansions and other residences I own around the world and donate the proceeds to environmental causes. For my personal use, I will purchase one home in the country of which I am a citizen of no more than 2,000 square feet, still giving me a level of privacy and luxury unknown to the people of the Third World, who have suffered enormously due to my excessive, personal contribution to man-made global warming throughout my career.

(3) Since flying is devastating to the climate because it injects greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere at high altitudes, I will never again fly for pleasure anywhere in the world, including in my own jet or in one chartered for me. If I must fly for my work, I will restrict myself to regularly-scheduled commercial flights, substituting more environmentally-friendly train or bus travel whenever possible.

(4) I will never again claim to be "carbon neutral" merely because I made a donation to some group that plants trees, since such programs are increasingly suspect in terms of their effectiveness and because this would be a continuation of my refusal to accept personal responsibility for the disproportionate environmental damage my extravagant lifestyle has caused.

(5) I will never again go on a shopping spree in New York, L.A., London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong or anywhere else, thus freeing myself from unnecessary possessions that require the burning of enormous amounts of fossil fuels both to create and to transport around the globe.

(6) Since locally-produced food and drink generate fewer greenhouse gases than those imported from abroad, I will consume only domestically-produced food, water and alcohol, including champagne.

(7) When taking vacations, I will confine myself to locales that are within driving distance of my home. Never again will I fly to any exotic, five-star resort, whose very existence is a grotesque monument to conspicuous consumption, one which could not have been built without the excessive burning of fossil fuels.

(8) Finally, I will never again permit my music or image to be used to sell any commercial product, to show that we must all simplify our lives in order to reduce our carbon footprint and save the Earth."

I can't wait to see who signs up. Can you?

I find the effort of DiCaprio and other "Hollywood types" to be empty gestures. First of all, he can afford the vehicle. But how did he and other actors get to the Oscars in the first place? They all took their private jets. These jets burn more fuel on one trip than an SUV will in its lifetime. But yet, these actors are celebrated as being "environmentally friendly." Al Gore creates a movie about global warming, and then still flies around in a private jet.
Sure, these people may need to traverse great distances, and jet travel is the best way to do it, but they can fly in larger aircraft that hold many people, thereby lowering the overall impact on the environment.
The bottom line is that they are just like most everyone else - the environment needs to be saved, global warming needs to be stopped, I will put forth a token gesture, but it is YOUR responsibility do what needs to be done.

....and what fuel is used to recharge the batteries in Leonardos' environmentally friendly gitney???
Conrad

Although I appreciate the efforts of DiCaprio and others, I find it sad that others cannot be so environmentally conscious as these celebrities because of the expense and inconvenience that it imposes.

REPLY: You mean like Al Gore and his private jets that burn how many tons of CO2 into the atmosphere?

We are still ruled by what the large automakers dictate as well as the Oil Industry. I don't see that changing anytime soon with the current administration in place.

REPLY: The dependency on oil comes from the growing demand from developing nations like China and India, not from the car manufacturers "dictating" what it is we should be driving, nor from any presidential administraiton.

By the way, Leo DiCaprio is a no-talent girlee man with nothing better to do with his kabillions of dollars except spend it on a vehicle that he would love to have everyone should drive, and on what ever dependencies he may have. Give me a break.

Oh, and one other thing. Heard the soundbite on the news this morning. Old Ozone Al's acceptance speech at the (waste of time) Oscars was cut off in mid stream by the network. Oh, I love the irony in that!.....:DDDDDD........

The Hollywood hypocrites would never do any of the things outlined in Lorrie Goldstein's pledge posted by Chris. They are demagogues who live self-indulgent life styles but like to preach to the rest of us about the environment, starving children, AIDS, etc. They actually DO very little besides living the high life. They write the occasional check amid great fanfare orchestrated by their publicists for self-promotion. They are really quite a disgusting lot, for the most part.

When did leftist actors become experts on global warming? I understand they are tring to bring publicity to global warming but in my opinion global warming has not been a proven fact and has been warped by polictians who pay "experts" to investagate global warming.

Only one thing comes to mind when we start hearing celebrities driving hybrids. I don't know if anyone out there watches South Park, but if you do, you should remember the "Smug episodes"....I wonder if these episodes are so smug that they smell their own gas because they think it smells good. Careful....we could have the perfect storm if all the smug cells combine. =)

The Al Gore cutoff music was a joke--the joke being he was about to make a "big announcement" when the music cut him off. I guess liberals sometimes have a better sense of humor than conservatives. "Oh, I love the irony in that!" to quote a prolific poster here.

Also, let's get one thing clear. The US, 5% percent of the world's population, contributes 21% of the world's carbon emissions. China, more than 20% of the world's population, contributes 18%. India, about 20% of the world's population, contributes 4%, well behind (the much less populated) Russia and Japan. So I don't know, maybe it's fair to make that lucky, lucky 5% bear a little more of the burden at the moment?

Also, I don't see why the likes of Rush Limbaugh or his dittoheads are any more expert than any of this than Al Gore, who's been devoted to this issue for two decades and, I should point out, was elected President of the United States.

Joe,

There's no need to be an expert on Global Warming to give your opinion or to launch a campaign as a way of raising people's awareness.

If being an expert on GW is a must, then 90% of the commenters - which includes me - shouldn't be posting.

Emiliano

And, also by way of proving that liberals have a sense of humor, I take the liberty of posting the following story:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/temperature_of_coffee

(Again, for the humor-challenged, this is a FAKE news story on a humor-news website)

um...Boris, Al Gore was NEVER elected president. He lost out to George W. Bush. Now, he was Vice president w/Bill Clinton.

Al Gore is a joke. He tells us to reduce our carbon footprint while he flies around in private jets and consumes more energy in his Tennessee mansion than 20 average American households. Then he tells us that he offsets his carbon gluttony by sending money to green groups who plant trees, etc. Here's an article about the world's biggest hypocrite: http://www.fairviewobserver.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070227/NEWS01/702270382/1321/MTCN06

Limosine liberals like Gore are laughable. The catastrophic AGW crowd needs to find a more credible spokesperson. Soupy Sales comes to mind but I think he passed.

Um, thanks for pointing out that Al Gore never took office. I know attention spans are short, but there was that whole popular vote thing, the hanging chads, the politicized Supreme Court decision, etc. (Do we--by the way--think he'd have taken us on a disastrous tour of Iraq? Show of hands.) Anyway, just a passing comment, no bearing on whether global warming is actually happening. He's a red herring, a straw man for skeptics, but it bears pointing out that the man who beat George W. Bush by half a million votes deserves just a little respect. Though, I might add, if being president made people immune to hypocrisy, we'd have had a much better last fifty years.

Perhaps if you guys stopped mobbing celebrities and having paparazzi chase after them so you can read your precious tabloid magazines, then they could rise public buses and planes.

To those of you who support Al Gore's cause etc. Please go to the story on ice cores and tree rings on this Global Warming site and look at the comments. I have to laugh as I read these comments after writing in the ice core article comment section.

In brief: Man-induced GW proponents, please start outlining the science of your concerns in lieu of merely pointing out that it is obviously occurring. There is no rational physics to describe the processess to which you subscribe. Check your political persuasion at the door, none of us really care that you worried about hanging chads in 2000. While those of us who do not buy into man-induced GW continually point out scientific questions and flaws in the logic of the GW proponents, we are treated to replies that have nothing to do with science and merely point out that OBVIOUSLY it is happenning and WE are ignorant.

Darren, that is simply not true. Politics is invoked every time someone slams Al Gore or implies that subscribing to the idea that global warming exists will destroy the economy or make people prey to opportunistic liberals. Why wouldn't I want to respond to such blanket dismissals of what should be a logical, scientific issue? Are we reading the same comments? The majority of what I see on the skeptics' side is junk logic (it's cold today!) and the most obvious kinds of sarcasm (I guess now we have to stop breathing!)

The principal of greenhouse gases raising temperatures is indeed a rational, physical model based on many, many tests, and the science is plentiful! And what about the story on ice cores itself? And what about the fact that the skeptics, when they do invoke science, are pointing to the same six or seven pieces of industry-funded junk science that are tirelessly rebutted by other posters, only to be brought up again in the next comments thread?

Ouch, maybe the critics should sit back, get positive and is what kind of progress the Hollywood set makes. Yeah, everyones right about the planes, homes, etc.,and smug Al Gore but most of the bloggers are over-the-top negative.