Fireflies, or lightning bugs, are being touted by Al Gore as the new green home lighting system for the southern U.S.A. According to Gore, the bioluminescent bugs are common in the south and could easily be caught by any ten year old boy.
"I used to catch fireflies when I was knee high to a grasshopper, put them in a jar, and read Tom Sawyer under the covers at night when I was supposed to be asleep," said Gore at the Lean Green Dream Machine Conference held in Greenville, North Carolina last Saturday.
According to the Associated Press, the typical house in Nashville, Tennessee, Al Gore's hometown, consumes about 15,600 kilowatt-hours a year.
Unfortunately, Gore's Nashville mansion, which alone consumed 191,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, does not qualify for the energy-savings firefly program as it would totally decimate the entire firefly population of the contiguous United States.
