Since all of us are enjoined to watch our “carbon footprint” these days (calculate “your impact” here!), I thought I might provide a public service by reprising the comparison some enterprising soul made between Al & Tipper Gore’s house in Tennessee and George & Laura’s spread in Texas:
House 1: George & Laura Bush Residence, Texas
The four-bedroom home was planned so that “every room has a relationship with something in the landscape that’s different from the room next door. Each of the rooms feels like a slightly different place.” The resulting single-story house is a paragon of environmental planning.
The passive-solar house is built of honey-colored native limestone and positioned to absorb winter sunlight, warming the interior walkways and walls of the 4,000-square-foot residence.
Geothermal heat pumps circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground. These waters pass through a heat exchange system that keeps the home warm in winter and cool in summer. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof urns; wastewater from sinks, toilets, and showers cascades into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is then used to irrigate the landscaping around the four-bedroom home, (which) uses indigenous grasses, shrubs, and flowers to complete the exterior treatment of the home. In addition to its minimal environmental impact, the look and layout of the house reflect one of the paramount priorities: relaxation.
A spacious 10-foot porch wraps completely around the residence and beckons the family outdoors. With few hallways to speak of, family and guests make their way from room to room either directly or by way of the porch. “The house doesn’t hold you in. Where the porch ends there is grass. There is no step-up at all.” This house consumes 25% of the energy of an average American home. (Source: Cowboys and Indians Magazine, Oct. 2002 and Chicago Tribune April 2001.)
House 2: Al & Tipper Gore, Tennessee
This 20-room, 8-bathroom house consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year. The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, this house devoured nearly 221,000 kWh, more than 20 times the national average. Last August alone, the house burned through 22,619 kWh, guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of this energy consumption, the average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.
Also, natural gas bills for this house and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year. In total, this house had nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for 2006. (Source: just about anywhere in the news last month online and on talk radio, but barely on TV.)
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17 Comments
mtm:Can someone please put this very simple comparison on television or in a mainstream newspaper? It really does say all there needs to be said about Hot Air Al.
Jun 25, 2008 - 4:46 pm CAWP:A marvellous telling detail for a future historian surveying our curiously deluded era.
Jun 25, 2008 - 8:47 pm Olivia:But of course Al needs all that space to make his powerpoint presentations. How else will he heal the planet. Ugh.
Jun 26, 2008 - 6:35 am Pat:But I’m sure Mr. Gore buys lots of carbon offsets, so he’s entitled to use as much energy as he wants. Conservation is for people who aren’t rich.
Jun 26, 2008 - 7:27 am millerro1:Bravo for President Bush (not sarcasm). The problem is: I can’t afford those kinds of improvements. Those improvements are worth more than my house, I suspect. So who is this really benefiting?
Jun 26, 2008 - 10:34 am vb:millero, it doesn’t matter whether you can afford those features. People who live in the city probably lack space for underground cisterns and do not need the water for their gardens. When people who are finacially able invest in these systems, they further our knowledge of their strengths and limitations and this could result in more widely applicable and more economical techniques. Bush is rather quietly doing what he can to be environmentally friendly. I prefer this to those people who push the one great idea that will save the world. Retrofitting is always a challenge, and normal people have to calculate what kinds of changes pay.
I personally think it is outrageous to be told to buy expensive lightbulbs for places like storage rooms. I just want to be allowed to use my own common sense.
Jun 26, 2008 - 5:23 pm punditius:“I personally think it is outrageous to be told to buy expensive lightbulbs for places like storage rooms. I just want to be allowed to use my own common sense.”
In looking around my condo, I find that I am going to have to rip out the recessed lighting in my improved basement, and in my bedroom, because the CFLs can’t be used in recessed lighting areas. That’s probably a few thousand dollars. The modest chandelier fixtures in my living room & entryway use those flame-shaped bulbs - I guess I don’t get to use those anymore. The entryway to our condo has a light fixture that takes five bulbs. For some reason, three of the sockets won’t work with CFLs. The lamp post by our sidewalk won’t accommodate CFLs - it will have to be replaced.
I’m voting against all incumbents this November.
Jun 26, 2008 - 8:51 pm LSD:I guess bloviating requires more electricity than actually being the President. -In fact, maybe if we had just voted for Gore, we might have saved the planet from that 20-room environmental disaster.
Jun 27, 2008 - 8:04 am OncealwaysaMarine:Yeah, you win this one for exposing this small transgression on His Honor Nobel laureate Al Gore’s part, but he conserves a little bit of home energy usage…Why, much of the time he’s not even at home…After all, he spends a tremendous amount of time carrying his message of our impending doom all over the United States and the world while flying around in his Gulfstream V, which is surely more environmentally friendly than my driving back and forth to work in my ‘98 Ford Taurus and using GE 100 watt incadescent light bulbs!!
P.S.- Don’t you dare call him a hypocrite, either! He’s spe-e-e-cial!
Jun 27, 2008 - 10:00 am Bill Bradley:You do realize, or, well, perhaps you do not, that Gore uses his home as a big office for his operations.
And that Bush … A. does not actually live at his “home” in Texas and B. has his office at something called La Maison Blance.
Jun 29, 2008 - 11:03 am Peter Laverick:Oncealwaysa Marine
Here in Australia we spell spe-e-e-cial
Jun 29, 2008 - 10:34 pm Pat:“t-w-a-t”
Bill Bradley:
Yes, we know that Gore uses his home as “a big office for his operations”. It still uses twenty times as much energy as a typical American home. Whatever “his operations” are, they apparently don’t have anything to do with reducing energy use or carbon emissions or whatever it is that Gore blathers about.
We also know that Bush is not currently living in his home. (Or, as you put it, his “home”. I guess you think he will be homeless next January.) So what? Roger cites both Cowboys & Indians Magazine and the Chicago Tribune as saying that Bush’s home uses only 25% as much energy as an average American home. Are you seriously suggesting that both publications were stupid enough to base their calculations on the Bush house’s energy consumption while it is unoccupied? I don’t find that even faintly plausible, and if you want to convince anyone that it’s true, you’ll have to present some evidence.
Oh, and by the way, including gratuitous French phrases in your comments is not very impressive when you don’t spell the French words correctly. There’s no E in “blanc”.
Jul 1, 2008 - 12:10 am