By taking those steps we could achieve what he called "energy neutral" living. We could lower our footprint on how much energy we cause to be used. What we can't save by conservation, we can neutralize by planting more trees in our yards to absorb the carbons that we must create to live. This begs the next question of why not plant more trees to absorb more carbons and then not have to worry about what lightbulb you're using?

Today, there are a lot of people advocating for conservation as a way of saving energy. One way that is advocated the most is to increase the miles per gallon of vehicles. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with a car getting better miles per gallon, but saving energy is not what is going to happen. Let me explain.

Say you have a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon. You spent x amount of money to buy gas every week. Now, suppose you buy a new car that gets 40 miles-per-gallon. Great. You get to travel twice as much as your old car or spend half as much money. One of the benefits of higher mileage is that you save money on gasoline. What are you going to do with that money? You are going to spend it or you're going to put it in the bank.

Let's say you decide to spend it on a new shirt at Wal-Mart. How are you going to get there? By car - more energy used on that trip that you would not have made without the savings on gas. After you buy that shirt, what does Wal-Mart have to do? They have to replace that shirt. How? A big truck delivers new shirts - more gas used because you saved. What does the shirt factory have to do? Make more shirts to replace the one you bought - more energy used. The shirt company hires more people to make all the extra shirts to sell to all the people saving gas money. More shirt makers have money, so they take more trips with their cars to spend all that extra money that you saved.

What if you put that money you saved in a bank instead of spending it? What does the bank do with it? The bank lends it out to people who are going to spend it. Some are going to use it to build houses which will require an enormous amount of energy.

Energy conservation is not determined by what vehicle you drive or by what kind of lightbulbs you use, but by the amount of wealth you have. There are two ways to increase wealth. One is increased production. The other is a population increase.

I have been wondering, if you increase the gas mileage on cars, does that make them more productive? Increased productivity increases wealth. Increased wealth causes more energy consumption. Does increased gas mileage actually cause more energy to be used?

Every time you spend money, you are causing energy to be used, somehow, somewhere. If you spend ten dollars, you create a ten dollar footprint of energy consumption. If you spend a hundred dollars, you create an energy footprint ten times greater.

The more money you have, the more you are going to spend, and the more energy you cause to be used. The amount of money you have is what determines the amuont of energy used, not the efficiency of the vehicle.

In the last few years, there has been a growing demand for energy in China and India. Why? It is because the people are accumulating more wealth. The more money they have, the more they spend, the more energy is used.

If you gave everybody in a relatively poor country like Haiti an SUV to drive, would their energy consumption go up? Of course not. Where are they going to get the extra money to buy extra gas? They will be spending more on gas, but buying fewer shirts.

Let me repeat it again because I think it is very important. Money equals energy consumption. Here is an easy little formula to remember: M = EC

There has been an unprecedented growth in wealth in the world in the last 20 to 30 years. More people are enjoying living standards that their fathers never dreamed of. More people own their own home, own vehicles, have telephones, TVs, computers, have access to a variety of foods never available throughout the history of the world. More people work less hours and have more time with families. The entertainment industries, vacation destinations, restaurants and cruise lines are all seeing increases in business. People live longer than ever before because of modern medicine and have a higher standard of living.

All of this has been achieved because of wealth. The wealthier a world is, the more it can do to make peoples' lives better. The wealthier it gets, the more it can do to help those who still have not reached the higher standard of living.

So, getting back to Al Gore. How can we use less energy to slow down global warming? There is only one way it can be done. The world has to become poorer.

That's right. We have to go back a couple of hundred years in our standard of living. We have to get rid of cars, appliances, hospitals, factories, restaurants, movie theaters, shopping malls, and having fresh grapes year round. Because all of these use energy or cause energy to be used. We need people to make less and everybody has to be poor. We need to go back and live a standard of life found in a third or fourth world country. Then, and only then, will we use less energy.

Of course, this will never happen. So what are all these dire warnings of doom and gloom all about? Why are more and more government bodies around the world passing laws to tell you what to drive, what kind of lightbulbs to install, and trying to make you feel guilty for taking an extra trip to the mall, for not using public transportation, for using your leaf blower?

Are plastic bags totally going to cause the end of a world that's been here for millions of years? Is there enough ice in the polar ice caps to melt and raise the level of all the oceans in the world by 1-20 feet?

Have we not had global warming before? All of North America was covered in ice about ten thousand years ago. What caused global warming then for all that ice to melt? How many SUVs had to be driven back and forth across the continent and at what speed, for all that ice to melt? How about all the benefits of that global warming? Could these be benefits in the next global warming?

The doom and gloom warnings, my friends, are all about power. There are only two ways that government can grow. One way takes more of your money, the other takes away more of your freedoms. Global warming is like manna from government heaven. It takes away both.