On ethical oil, blood and Gore (Toronto Sun Editorial – May 11, 2013)

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For a man with a carbon footprint the size of a dwarf planet, Al Gore takes the hypocrite’s cake for his ignorant statement that there is “no such thing as ethical oil.” He was in Canada this week to sell his new book, of course, so what better way to get media attention than to insult both the host country and one of its major resources?

If you want to know the name of his book, look it up. We’re not going to shill for him, even if he is a former vice president of the United States as well as an over-hyped, over-compensated mockumentarist who is unfortunately looked upon by millions as a climate-change visionary.

“There is no such thing as ‘ethical’ oil,” he recently told Canada-AM, and others. “There is only dirty oil and dirtier oil.” This was shortly after we took him to task Wednesday for describing Alberta’s oilsands as a “reckless spewing of pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere as if it’s an open sewer.”

While we don’t know precisely what fuels all of Gore’s jet travel, or powers his mega-mansion, we doubt he has concocted a carbon-free superfuel like he supposedly invented that “information superhighway” known as the Internet.

We would have liked to think, however, that he was wise enough to realize the lack of legitimate options to fossil fuels might make Canada a better supplier of oil than some despotic country in the Middle East.

At least in Canada women are not being stoned to death.

A recent Bloomberg analysis has pegged Gore’s net worth as high as $200 million.

Good for him. Wish we all had original Apple options that triggered when the stock price was up 5,900%. Or could pocket $70 million when Al Jazeera purchased Current TV, a “fixer-upper” American network.

According to Bloomberg, however, most of Gore’s investment “flubs” were in green-tech investing.

That ought to tell him that science is a long way from finding a sustainable and affordable alternative to oil — regardless of whether it’s “dirty oil or dirtier oil.” But at least Canada’s oil producers have no blood on their hands.

And that, to us, is ethical oil.

For the original version, click here: http://www.torontosun.com/2013/05/10/on-ethical-oil-blood-and-gore