Bush's Ranch - Model Green Home

You have heard about Al Gore's utility bill. The idea behind the bill jibe is "Holy Hypocrite" Batman, which may be interesting character evidence to be used when judging his message, but it is still not a rejection of the message. Ad hominem attacks should be avoided or, at least, kept to a side bar.

I suppose most people would be surprised a bit about Gore since we don't teach in school his family made its money in the Tea Pot Dome scandal and VP Gore rewarded Occidental Petroleum with the $100/acre Dome land diversion.

If you missed the utility dig, here is a teaser:

Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth'? -- $30,000 utility bill

ABCNews">

(2/27/07 - NASHVILLE, TN) - Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore's environmental hypocrisy.

Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. Etc etc etc.

[Tenn. has one of the lowest electrical rates in the US, thanks to the TVA- Ed]

OK, True Believers will think their Bishop is allowed to light his cathedral because, after all, he is bringing religion to the world. After all, Kerry has his private jet and SUVs. The demi-gods don't have to do what they say. Just like the Communist Party in Russia had big limos driving special lanes in Moscow and fancy dachas in the country.

Perhaps, but check out the following, thanks to Irene, my major news service. Notice the article is from April, 2001, so it is not recent spin.

Chicago Tribune

Bush loves ecology --at home

April 29, 2001

By Rob Sullivan. Rob Sullivan is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude.

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy.

This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford

According to David Heymann, the house's architect and associate dean of the University of Texas architecture department, Heymann designed the house 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."

In a USA Today interview, Heymann said, "There's a great grove of oak trees to the west that protects it from the late afternoon sun. Then there is a view out to the north looking at hills, and to the east out over a lake, and the view to the south . . . out to beautiful hills."

OK, one for the Bush side. He is a guy who quietly has gone off-grid. You would think his personal enemies would give him a little credit. It doesn't look like it, after I visited a few links following a Google search on "Bush's ranch heat sink."

Get this, one article called President Bush a hypocrite! This one has me scratching my head. the theory seems to be he had the green ranch built that way because he knew from his evil friends that oil would be unaffordable.

Another venomous writer said Bush probably had an architect design the place. What? First of all, its true, as the architect is often quoted, but what does the writer mean? If you hire someone to build an off-grid home with a heat sink, you are still evil because you didn't follow plans from Mother Earth magazine? I guess it is supposed to mean Bush is so stupid he had to hire a superb expert to build his green ranch, using the money he earned from putting together a consortium to by the Texas Rangers. That dope.

A long piece by "Off-Grid" opened piece, I put the link above, with all manner of canards about the evil Bush and throughout the article gets in its slug fest, but buried deep:

“By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small,” says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home. “Clients of similar ilk are building 16-to-20,000-square-foot houses.”
The narrow porch stretches across the back and ends of the house. At one end, it widens into a covered patio off the living room.

The Bush ranch is the kind of place we’d all like to live. Too bad his environmental policies are moving the rest of the country in exactly the opposite direction.

So, now you know the rest of the story.