OZONE MANIC

Despite his prodigious size, Al Gore can walk on water--or so I believed. He has all the qualities one could ask for in a leader: genius, judgement, humility, and social consciousness. As an elected senator, vice president, and president, Al has always appealed to our better angels. So why is he so hell bent on destroying the environment?

If you ask yourself what emits 377,000 lbs. of ozone -depleting greenhouse gasses annually, 20 times the national average and the equivalent of 20 Hummers humming around the clock, the answer crushes you like an anvil on Wylie Coyote. It's the Gore homestead in Tennessee, this according to Gregg Easterbrook, a fellow of the Brookings Institution, author of The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, and author of today's NYTimes Op-Ed piece, "Al Gore's Outsourcing Solution."

The Gore camp will argue that our elected, but never-seated president pays extra for wind power and buys carbon credits to the tune of $1,247.50, rounded to the nearest dime, to offset his voracious energy appetite. Carbon credits, you'll recall, are used to invest in technologies that, in theory, reduce pollutants equal to one's overproduction. Credits can also be purchased from under-polluting entities in a zero-net-sum game.

But, like Wylie Coyote, have we all gone Looney Tunes? When it comes to pollution, zero-net-gain, means zero-net-loss. Environmentally, this is not a wash. Only a drastic reduction in carbon emissions will forestall cataclysmic climate change.

It's hard to imagine how Al's $1,247.50 will negate his negative impact on the environment. It is estimated that it would require planting 40,000 trees to counter the harmful effects of Al's abode. That's a lot of raking.

Can we buy our way out of destroying our Gossamer-thin atmosphere, or must we make some lifestyle choices? And who better to lead the way, than our nation's greatest environmental proponent?

I'm willing to make exceptions. If Al would like to take 365 plane flights a year to environmental speaking engagements, that's pollution well spent. But when one's house is measured in acres, it hard to seize the high ground.

That Al's tireless crusade to build awareness of the environment has achieved far more than one man's waste should go without saying. But to ask others to downsize -- to progress through reverse growth -- one must lead by example.

PNN is not asking Al to live in a FEMA trailer--just a reasonably sized home. If Al insists on a larger house, I know of a white one on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that desperately needs a leader.