So-called “Climate Deniers” tend to love Al Gore. They can’t get enough of him. Every single time some (poorly educated) climate denier loses an argument in a discussion about whether or not climate change is real, they would come up with:
“You know what…I don’t believe in climate change, and neither do the people that promote it. Look at Al Gore: he is flying around in his private airplane trying to teach people that greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to the planet!”.
So there are two questions to answer:
1) Does Al Gore fly around the earth in a private jet?
2) If he does, or if his airplane schedule is quite busy, will it be fair to call him a hypocrite?
Table of Contents
- Does Al Gore Use a Private Jet?
- If Al Gore (hypothetically) had a huge carbon footprint, would he then be a hypocrite?
- Literature – two books about Al Gore and his environmental politics
- An Inconvenient Truth – fantastic documentary
Does Al Gore Use a Private Jet?
No, he does not. A lot of unreliable sources online have tried to claim that Al Gore owns and flies Private Jet when he travels around to various climate conferences. That is simply not true.
The most reliable source is Al Gore himself. In an interview with CNN he was asked directly – and denied. He also adds that he lives a carbon-free lifestyle as he offsets all the greenhouse gases that he produces through his frequent travel plan.
You can see the full video here:
And can you guess who was behind the false “private jet claim”? Mister Donald Trump himself.
If Al Gore (hypothetically) had a huge carbon footprint, would he then be a hypocrite?
As we already debunked the “Private Jet Myth”, this question might not be too relevant for Al Gore. However, we do have several other people in show business that claim to be eco-friendly. Leonardo DiCaprio and Elon Musk springs to mind.
Climate deniers often tend to use these types of arguments:
#1: “If you are so concerned about the environment, why do you eat beef?”
#2: “Oh, so you believe in global warming? I hope that you are a vegan, have never stepped your feet into an airplane, don’t own a car and only shower in cold water!”
This type of discussion technique does not provide much value to a discussion. There is not a rule saying that there has to be a correlation between understanding what happens to our climate & living a carbon neutral lifestyle. And for the record: Al Gore DOES live a carbon-neutral lifestyle.
Just to illustrate why these types of arguments are a bit weird:
#1: “Oh, so you are not a racist? Why don’t you give all your money to organizations that actively fight racism? Why don’t you open your home to refugees coming from the Middle East!?”
#2. “If you care so much about your education, why don’t you stay in school 16 hours a day?”
In other words: just because you are educated and hold a certain moral stand on something does not necessarily mean that you need to go to the extreme. If Mister Gore, or someone else, pointed fingers towards people that had a certain lifestyle, he would probably have to defend that by living in the same way himself.
Literature – two books about Al Gore and his environmental politics
For every environmental documentary out there, there are at least 10 Youtube videos explaining why everything in that documentary is false.
And it’s the same with books.
Once some politician, scientist or other high-profiled person writes a book about climate change, some random author will write a book about the same topic. This happened to Al Gore as well.
An Inconvenient Truth vs Inconvenient Facts
In 2006, Al Gore wrote a book called “An Inconvenient Truth”, which was highly linked to his famous documentary. In 2017, someone called Gregory Wrightstone wrote a book trying to “debunk” Al Gore.
It was called “Inconvenient Facts: The Science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know”.
You can check out both books by clicking on the links below:
What did I get out from reading these books?
Frankly, I didn’t get much out of reading the book written by Al Gore. I’ve already seen the facts. After all, I keep myself updated on nearly any environmental issue that can be found out there.
But “Inconvenient Facts” was quite an interesting read. Not because I liked what I read. But I love to hear the other side. However, the book has been quite dramatically debunked.
And you can read one debunk approach by clicking on this link. It will lead you to a website called Commonwealth Foundation.
An Inconvenient Truth – fantastic documentary
The documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, made by Al Gore, is the mother of all eco-documentaries. It might becoming a bit old and outdated, but if you haven’t seen it: please do it.
And if you are looking for other documentaries to gain some new knowledge about what is going on in the world, feel free to check out this list. Most of them can be found on Netflix.
