What I'm ridiculing is the notion that we can have meaningful environmental change without radical changes in lifestyle. It's the ersatz "commitment" to all things "green" that I find intellectually insulting. Most of it is just clever marketing, and Al Gore is the greatest promoter of this kind of ridiculous hype. Maybe now that he's employed by a venture capitalist firm, he can figure out how to really cash in.

Nothing you've written answers the questions I asked in my last post. Everyone agrees that incremental change is better than nothing; the difference is that not all of us pretend it's something more than it is, which is not much. And even those gains will be meaningless in the face of continued population growth.

As for nuclear energy, yes, it's potentially very dangerous, but where do you propose to get the energy for your own computer outside of either burning fossil fuels or splitting atoms? Solar is great, but it's not able to satisfy the massive demand that contemporary society has created. Hydro is nice too, but it requires building dams that destroy wild landscapes and change ecosystems.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but there simply is no feel-good solution to these big environmental issues. Any actual solution will require significant sacrifice. The first step in that direction is, like the addict's challenge, admitting that we have a problem.

Explain how all these wonderful things that are allegedly happening will actually stabilize, not to mention reduce, the macro level output of greenhouse gases in the absence of a) population control and b) a massive effort in the developed world to consume less of all the earth's resources. I'd like to know.

As an aside, we could put a big dent in the output of greenhouse gases by building more nuclear power plants, but of course that just goes to show that there's more to the environment than the obsession with carbon. Nobody wants a nuclear plant anywhere in their vicinity.

Actual green living - in most cases this means consuming less - is good; merely talking about it, which is what Gore does, is not the same thing.

I'll grant that there is a value in public figures championing a cause because people tend to ape their betters. But that doesn't excuse the rich and famous from actually applying the principles - with equal rigor - to their own lives.

The problem with Gore and others of his ilk is that they'll never acknowledge the logical end point of their tirades: that true environmentalism might compromise our consumer-based economy, that there might actually be less wealth generated if people were more green-minded because they would be consuming less. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but let's not pretend otherwise.

The fanciful green-based economy that Gore likes to wax eloquent about is only a chimera at this point. Maybe it will materialize and maybe it won't. What I do know is that our current actual economy is based on ever-growing consumption of resources, and that people define their status by how much they consume. Gore himself proves this.

You're right, chickadee. Gore doesn't prance; he flies in jets, probably of the private variety, emitting lots of greenhouse gases even as he tells us how important it is to conserve. Again, what's unacknowledged in all the worship is the essential elitism of the argument: do as I say, not as I do.

I think it's great that Gore has been advocating for the environment for 30 years. Wouldn't you think in that amount of time that he would've realized the contradictions inherent in his personal situation, and perhaps acted accordingly? Or perhaps that's beside the point. Maybe the point is public adoration and careerism.

It's not about all or nothing. It's about forcing people who like to prance around touting their environmental credentials to put up or shut up.

Why is it so terrible to ask anyone to live within developed-world average per-capita levels of consumption? That's still luxurious compared to most of the world's population, and in comparison to 99% of human history.

Idolizing bigshots just for saying the right thing, while continuing vast levels of personal consumption, only feeds the shallow culture of celebrity and careerism, and does nothing to solve environmental problems.

I guess it's not such a great revelation that people who consider themselves environmentalists are more likely to recycle, drive a more efficient vehicle, etc. But the rich are still hypocrites on this issue because their overall level of consumption is so much higher than everyone else's.

Case in point: all those Hollywood types and Al Gore at the Oscars in front of a backdrop with words like "public transit" plastered everywhere. When was the last time any of these people took a city bus? There's clearly an elitist bent to the dialogue over global warming when we're supposed to idolize the rich who make a few token sacrifices.

If Al Gore and all the rest were truly serious about global warming, pollution, whatever, they'd lower their consumption at least to the average of the developed world - with all the sacrifices for their prestige and their lifestyles that that entails. I think they actually end up damaging the environmental cause because they encourage shallow, feel-good remedies like buying a Prius. Only when a significant majority becomes committed to reducing their consumption of everything will we be on the track to a greener planet. That includes celebrities and over-procreating politicians.