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Do You Walk Your Talk?

When the LBN E-Lert ran the news story about Al Gore's home in Tennessee using 20 times the average household energy use (and actually increasing its energy use in the past few years), its readers complained at a ratio of 10 to 1 that the ezine shouldn't be attacking a hero. But all it did was repeat a news story reported elsewhere.

Personally, I think Al Gore should walk his talk. How can he go around lecturing other people about decreasing their energy use when he hasn't even done it in his own home? That really is the most important thing he could be doing for the environment.

I think that anyone who campaigns for the environment should be doing something in his or her own life to reflect that. I've been cutting my already limited energy use for the past five years by keeping my thermostat at 55 at night during the winter, not using air conditioning in the summer, and using the new low-wattage light bulbs in all my fixtures. Plus I buy as much of my food locally as I can and reuse or recycle everything I can.

It always offends me to see Hollywood celebrities talk about environmental issues and then watch them still driving around in Hummers, flying all over the place for multiple vacations, buying or building huge houses, and doing other conspicuous consumption activities. I believe people should walk their talk.

And I don't think you can be environmentally responsible by buying energy credits. That's a false ecological economy. If we are going to be serious about global warming, we must begin with our own individual actions and not just participate in grand but essentially meaningless gestures.

Even in my business I'm cutting down on energy costs by providing more and more of my products as downloadable content rather than paper-based products. That saves a lot of energy in paper production, recycling, transportation, packaging, etc.

What are you doing to walk your talk?

If you are going to write a book about a subject, no matter what the subject, make sure you live what you write. You can't hold other people to a standard you don't even live by yourself.

Labels: Al Gore, celebrities, ecology, energy credits, environment, recycling, walk your talk