Perhaps it's due to my own naiveté but I was truly surprised by the amount of responses I received to last week's newsletter regarding the homes owned by President Bush and former Vice President Gore. It was as if the election of 2000 was being fought over all over again. And by that, I mean before the actual election results and recall.
Let me explain. First, last week's column was really only about two houses owned by two very powerful people. The idea was to point out the IRONY of the situation, and how the public and personal personas don't always connect. Through the media, I had learned that George W. Bush—who does not present himself as a green movement advocate and whose policies have been considered by many as not only not particularly environmentally friendly, but possibly harmful—happens to own a Texas ranch that runs on green principles. I had also heard—once again, through the media—that Al Gore, who recently won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, his documentary on global warming and is the darling of the green movement and Hollywood alike, is still working on bringing his Tennessee mansion up to green standards. There was no judgment attached to my reporting these facts; my column was only meant to present these observations to the public. However, a real hot button issue was hit. And, as I've since discovered, my facts may not have been 100 percent correct, either.
One reader revealed that, in fact, the high figures for energy usage at the Gore estate, which were supposedly provided by the Nashville Energy Service, were actually "fabricated." She explained that "company spokeswoman Laurie Parker said the utility never got a request from the policy center and never gave it any information." It turns out that the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR), the organization that initiated the story about Gore's high energy usage, believes that "issues such as 'global warming' are better settled through free market solutions than governmental legislation." I won't dispute which avenue is a better way to go, but I will acknowledge that the TCPR carries its own agenda, and that's just part of the debate.
In light of many of the other emails I received in response to my column, I believe it's important to offer both sides of a debate if ever a solution is to be found. It's my strong belief that global warming is a serious issue and one that is going to be with us a long time. I'll leave it up to the scientific experts to determine whether it's a manmade or natural event or a combination of both. Either way, as long as we can continue to keep the debate alive, then we're all heading in the right direction.
In the meantime, short of doing it myself, I would love to see the media take an inside tour of both Bush's and Gore's houses so we can all see what they're really all about.
This topic was published as part of the House Media Network newsletter. Read this newsletter in its entirety at www.housemedianetwork.com/newsletter/26
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