light bulb

There was a lot of talk this week about Al Gore's utility bill. When a right wing smear machine released a statement that Gore's utility bill was $30,000 last year, the typical vultures jumped on it. Their support of the claims was nothing more than a picture:

This picture was spread around the right wing blogs as "exposing Gore". The only problem is that it did nothing to explain Gore's bill. It was simply given a caption "Every family has a different carbon footprint". That is very true. They failed to mention that Gore and his wife run their offices out of their home, plus have the security that accompanies a former vice-President at their home. These add up to the bill, but the most damming part for the smear machine comes from the TVA, Gore's energy supplier. The TVA released a statement regarding the claims and said that the Gores do get their energy from renewable resources and they pay almost double for that. The TVA also said that Gore's actual energy usage is less than a lot of smaller homes. Keith Olbermann gave a run down of this statement, and you can view it here.

But this smear attack against the world's most famous global warming warrior is not stopping other countries from taking action. Last month Australia announced that all incandescent light bulbs will be banned in their country within 3 years. Now the European Union is following suit:

The world's three largest light bulb makers said Thursday they will push European consumers to switch to energy-saving bulbs in a bid to cut carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming.