That's making things FAR too specific though. It all boils down to this: He wants people to care about the environment, but his lifestyle is not conducive to such a position itself. Then he asks that everyone else make sacrifices in their lives in order to be more environmentally friendly, and yet he seemingly makes none. And don't tell me CFLs over Inkies or not always running the AC are sacrifices. At most I'd call them compromises, not even rising to the level of a concession.
He contradicts the very spirit of his message through his lifestyle. If he lived in a yurt using only wind power and a composting toilet, (A tad extreme for the sake of fun) I think people would actually laud him for being consistent in his message...even if they disagreed with it.
-Nick
But again, those are
your arguments. You're applying
your value judgments.
You may not think switching to CFLs is a "sacrifice," but that's one of the things the "green movement" (for lack of a better term) has brought to the public consciousness.
You may not think that changing the thermostat is a big deal, but again, that's been the message of the "green movement."
To quote Al Gore from "An Inconvenient Truth," he says: "Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_inconvenient_truth#cite_note-8
I don't know if you saw the film, but at the end, during the credits, the film had brief suggestions on what viewers can do to reduce carbon emissions, the first thing it said was buy energy efficient appliances and lightbulbs, change your thermostat, weatherize your house, recycle, "if you can, buy a hybrid car," "when you can, walk or ride a bicycle," plant trees, etc, etc, etc. That's the message.
As I said before, I think the arguments coming from the environmental side are being blown out of proportion and y'all are acting like Al Gore is trying to impose some draconian laws saying don't ever drive your car again. And speaking of Al Gore, the Gores
opted to pay thousands more on their utility bills to purchase renewable energy. Not walking the walk, you say?
So what is Cameron's actual message? Because again, by definition, to be a hypocrite, one has to contradict one's own message, not the standards of his detractors. The "we're going to have to live with less" line c
ame from an LA Times article:
"And it will be a dying world if we don't make some fundamental changes about how we view ourselves and how we view wealth," Cameron says. "I consider the wealth of this nation its natural resources, not the things that we're brought up to think of as wealth. We're going to have to live with less.
"And I know people will look at me and say, 'Oh, he's a rich guy. What does he know about living with less?' I admit it's difficult once you've reached a certain level in your life. But I think there's a way to live and raise your kids with a set of values that teaches them the importance of hard work, the importance of respecting other people and the importance of respecting nature. And that it's not this consumer society where you buy something and then throw it away when you get the next new thing, filling up huge landfills with plastic and electronics."
Is he telling wealthy people to abandon their mansions? Working folk to not drive? Is he saying "green troopers" are going to come to your door? Nope. Although admittedly, he's not making a strong case in defending himself against the criticism.
As I said before, I'm honestly not trying to defend Cameron. He may well be a hypocrite. But nothing in this thread actually definitively proves that he is one, because none of the claims against him are
verifiable. Moreover, the video in the OP clearly has a political agenda based on Prop 23 and that video makes some pretty outlandish claims. I don't want to get into the political side of the argument, so I'll leave it at that. But if you go to the noteviljustwrong.com link in the video, they're trying to sell you an anti-global warming documentary. So Al Gore and James Cameron are hypocrites for profiting off of "global warming hysteria," while these people are not for basically doing the same thing from the opposite side of the spectrum?
All I'm asking for is objectivity and rationality.
