The Al Gore Award for Environmental Hypocrisy

I try not to get into personalities on this blog. I make one exception and that for is the wealthy environmentalists who tell ordinary people they need to make sacrifices that they themselves are unwilling to make. These include Al Gore, Laurie David, Michael Moore, and Thomas Friedman who preach you and I have to sacrifice and cut back while they fly around on private jets and/or live ostentatious lifestyles with giant carbon footprints.

It is with sadness I add another to this list: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, an actress whose work I enjoy. Watch her plea to stop the extension of an existing oil pipeline. 

In the video you'll see her talk about people being "greedy" and wanting to make "very big bucks" because they want to build the extension to the Keystone XL Pipeline. She says she wants to end the "tyranny of oil."

To an extent, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus got her wish yesterday as the Obama Administration decided to delay its decision until after the 2012 election. Regardless of what you might think of the pipeline itself, lots of good-paying jobs will be delayed as a result of the postponement. Roger Pielke, Jr. has an interesting perspective here. 

The lack of jobs and economic opportunity doesn't affect Julia. Ms. Louis-Dreyfus' family is incredibly wealthy (billionaires). What made them that way? In part, oil and pipelines!

From "Forbes" in 2005, click to enlarge

and, that isn't the half of it. Her family owns an energy company 

and, here is information on their oil interests:

At the bare minimum, she should explain the apparent conflict-of-interest in her video (i.e., why it is OK for her family to be in this business but others should not). Otherwise, it isn't hard to speculate why she is against the pipeline: Her family's company may not want the competition!

So, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus is the latest winner of my Al Gore Award for Environmental Hypocrisy.