HOUSE # 1:

A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add
on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas.
In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average
American
household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural
gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we
checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the
national
average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or
Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South.


HOUSE # 2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university,
this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can
provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is
nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in
the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes
sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the
house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such
as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for
a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected
and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from
showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then
into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding
the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the
surrounding rural landscape.


HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville,
Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and
filmmaker) Al Gore.


HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas.
Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the
President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Did Al forget that he is supposed to be an environmentalist?????

__________________
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." -V

Good for Bush, except it should be noted that some of those features were simply practical adaptations for a large house built in the middle of nowhere in an arid land. Gore's house, by contrast, is in the middle of civilization.

Gore's house is 10,000 square feet, while Bush's is 4,000.

Also, Gore's house is way old -- about 100 years or so? -- while Bush's is new. It's a bit of apples and oranges to compare a brand new house to one -- even a retrofitted one -- built a century ago. Especially because geothermal heating is apparently not an option in Nashville.

There's also this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259938,00.html

The city has prevented them from placing "generators" -- i.e., solar panels -- on the house.

And finally, this:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/32695_vp26.shtml

Dick Cheney uses way more electricity than Gore: $186,000 a year for electricity alone.

Of course, Cheney lives in a 33-room government mansion, and there is probably a lot of official entertainment done there. And the story notes that Gore used even more power when he was VP.

But it does point up the apples-and-oranges nature of such debates.

__________________
Man up.