Glass Houses: Which House Belongs to the Environmentalist?

Source info: Email received 4/30/07 and Snopes.com
HOUSE # 1: A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house), along with 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 is located 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.

And just whom do these homes belong to?

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

From Snopes.com: This e-mail comparison between the homes of President George W. Bush and former vice-president Al Gore began circulating on the Internet in March, 2007 (shortly after the latter's film on the global warming issue, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Academy Award as Best Documentary). Short and sweet, there's a fair bit of truth to the e-mail: Al Gore's Nashville mansion is something of the energy-gobbler the e-mail depicts, while President Bush's Crawford ranch is more the model of responsible resource use the juxtaposition portrays it to be.

According to the Associated Press, the Gore's 10,000 square foot Belle Meade residence consumes electricity at a rate of about 12 times the average for a typical house in Nashville (191,000 kwh versus 15,600 kwh). While there are mitigating factors, this is still a surprising number, given that the residence is approximately four times the size of the average new American home.

The ranch home owned by George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, (dubbed "the Texas White House") was designed by Austin architect David Heymann, an associate dean for undergraduate programs at the University of Texas School of Architecture. While its precise size isn't known, scuttlebutt has it that it's about 4,000 square feet, all on one floor. The ranch utilizes an efficient geothermal heating and cooling system that pumps ground water through a heat exchanger to warm the house in the winter and cool it in the summer, a system that expends roughly one-quarter the energy of a conventional heater/air-conditioner. Water used by the house is reclaimed, treated, and reused, and rainwater funnels from the home's gutters into a large cistern, which holds the water for garden irrigation.

This is yet another story you won't hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in The New York Times or The Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Al Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."

Pope Calls Gay Marriage "folly", Warns Politicians

While reading an article on CNet.com, I saw the graphic to the right. No matter how much it goes on, I am still shocked by the anti-Christian bashing taking place on the Net these days. Being curious, I clicked on the image and the following article came up:

Fri Sep 8, 2006 8:58 AM ET
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Friday Catholic politicians could not be swayed by opinion polls and social trends into supporting practices such as abortion and the "folly" of gay marriage. The Pope repeated his opposition to abortion and gay marriage in a toughly worded address to visiting bishops from Canada.
"In the name of ‘tolerance' your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse, and in the name of ‘freedom of choice' it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children," the Pope said."When the Creator's divine plan is ignored the truth of human nature is lost," he said.
Canada legalized gay marriage last year but its parliament will hold a vote later this year on whether to start the process of scrapping the law, which is opposed by conservatives. Since his election last year, the Pope has often condemned gay marriage and last June a Vatican document called it one sign of "the eclipse of God" in modern times. In his address to the bishops, the Pope also touched on the highly sensitive issue of whether Catholic politicians can back legislation allowing practices such as gay marriage and abortion even if they are personally opposed to them. The Pope condemned such behavior by politicians as "false dichotomies".
"They are particularly damaging when Christian civic leaders sacrifice the unity of faith and sanction the disintegration of reason and the principles of natural ethics, by yielding to ephemeral social trends and the spurious demands of opinion polls," he said. "Democracy succeeds only to the extent that it is based on truth and a correct understanding of the human person. Catholic involvement in political life cannot compromise on this principle...," he said.
The Church, particularly in developed countries such as the United States, has been divided over the issue of whether Catholic politicians who support abortion should be allowed to receive communion. The issue divided U.S. Catholics and their bishops during the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry, a Democrat and a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Some Catholic politicians say they are personally opposed to abortion but, in pluralistic societies such as the United States, feel obliged to support a woman's right to choose.
Last June, a task force of the U.S. Catholic bishops conference left the decision of whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be denied communion with local bishops. President George W. Bush, a Protestant and a Republican, opposes abortion and gay marriage. Gay marriage is expected to be an issue in November elections when control of the Republican-led U.S. Congress will be at stake.

First, I was surprised to see a fairly unbiased report -- though the tone is definitely pro-gay. in my opinion, Pope Benedict, makes very good points. When we endure the redefinition of spouse and the ongoing legacy of murdered unborn children, we are losing humanity -- as defined and mandated by our Creator. Mankind will answer for the 30 million aborted children. We will also answer for the 1%-3% of liberal activisits that have chosen the behavior of homosexuality to rule over the other 97%+ of us. The Church will certainly answer for not showing people, in love, the error of their ways and choices.