Fifty Flowers Bloom

WHEN word of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize reached a gathering of free-market wonks at the Portland Marriott in Maine on October 12, it met with a mix of mockery and disbelief. “Now he joins the ranks of Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat,” muttered one attendee in a hallway. They were able to laugh it off in part because they were in the presence of Trent Seibert of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a.k.a. “the Al Gore guy.” Aday earlier, he had shared his story with them.

On a Sunday evening last February, Seibert found himself watching the Oscars. “When Gore won his award for best documentary, I decided that first thing in the morning, I would look up the public records for his electric bills,” he says. By the middle of Monday afternoon, just as Gore was supposed to be enjoying a victory lap for An Inconvenient Truth, his global-warming movie, Seibert’s inquiry had exposed Gore as an energy glutton whose Nashville mansion devoured twice as much electricity in one month as the average U.S. household used in a whole year. “Gore deserves a gold statue in hypocrisy,” said a press release from the Tennessee Center.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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WHEN word of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize reached a gathering of free-market wonks at the Portland Marriott in Maine on October 12, it met with a mix of mockery and disbelief. “Now he joins the ranks of Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat,” muttered one attendee in a hallway. They were able to laugh it off in part because they were in the presence of Trent Seibert of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a.k.a. “the Al Gore guy.” Aday earlier, he had shared his story with them.

On a Sunday evening last February, Seibert found himself watching the Oscars. “When Gore won his award for best documentary, I decided that first thing in the morning, I would look up the public records for his electric bills,” he says. By the middle of Monday afternoon, just as Gore was supposed to be enjoying a victory lap for An Inconvenient Truth, his global-warming movie, Seibert’s inquiry had exposed Gore as an energy glutton whose Nashville mansion devoured twice as much electricity in one month as the average U.S. household used in a whole year. “Gore deserves a gold statue in hypocrisy,” said a press release from the Tennessee Center.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.