For those who were shocked to “discover” that Al Gore’s actually a green-power-hating, zinc-mine-loving, Occidental Petroleum-stock-owning guy who doesn’t even buy his own carbon offsets, you’ll be glad to know that the dude who “outed” Gore is full of shit.

Peter Schweitzer’s piece in the USA Today last week got lotsa coverage; the actual facts got little attention.

Writes David Roberts of Grist, who read a response from Gore’s office then called Gore’s office to find out more:

Gore receives no royalties from the mine, which shut down in 2003. (USA Today actually printed a correction about this, way down on page 10A.) Gore owns no stock in Occidental, and never has (his father did; it was all sold over six years ago). Gore does in fact take advantage of the green power options his utility offers, and was in the process of adding photovoltaic solar cells to his house when the article came out. He pays for his own personal carbon offsets, in addition to the institutional offsets purchased by Paramount (movie distributor) and Rodale (book publisher), which make both the book and the movie completely carbon neutral. [more here]

David further points out that Peter’s a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, which is funded by is far-right groups and upstanding companices (sarcasm) like Exxon.

What pisses me off is the laziness of mainstream media, giving voice to accusations based almost entirely on lies. Granted, Peter’s diatribe’s an opinion piece, but considering the space USA Today gave the dude, why not try to maintain some level of journalistic integrity?

I just did a Technorati search for the original USA Today article — which already boasts 263 links, most of which bought Peter’s slander wholesale. Even going to each of those blogs to set ‘em straight would be a long day’s work –

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