FirmhandKY
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quote:
ORIGINAL: rulemylife
quote:
ORIGINAL: EternalHoH
Al Gore is to climate change, as what Palin is to the tea party.
Somebody has to be "out there", stirring the pot of misdirections, and getting obscenely rich doing it.
I've asked several times on this thread and so far no one has been able to tell me how he is "getting obscenely rich doing it".
Care to educate me?
I've asked several times on this thread and so far no one has been able to tell me how he is "getting obscenely rich doing it".
Several ways. Here is about a year old article:
Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: November 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses.
Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.
Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.
Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.
Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.
“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.”
In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades.
...
Mr. Gore has invested a significant portion of the tens of millions of dollars he has earned since leaving government in 2001 in a broad array of environmentally friendly energy and technology business ventures, like carbon trading markets, solar cells and waterless urinals.
He has also given away millions more to finance the nonprofit he founded, the Alliance for Climate Protection, and to another group, the Climate Project, which trains people to present the slide show that was the basis of his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Royalties from his new book on climate change, “Our Choice,” printed on 100 percent recycled paper, will go to the alliance, an aide said.
Other public figures, like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have vocally supported government financing of energy-saving technologies, have investments in alternative energy ventures. Some scientists and policy advocates also promote energy policies that personally enrich them.
As a private citizen, Mr. Gore does not have to disclose his income or assets, as he did in his years in Congress and the White House. When he left government in early 2001, he listed assets of less than $2 million, including homes in suburban Washington and in Tennessee.
...
Mr. Gore’s spokeswoman would not give a figure for his current net worth, but the scale of his wealth is evident in a single investment of $35 million in Capricorn Investment Group, a private equity fund started by his friend Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of eBay.
...
He has a stake in the world’s pre-eminent carbon credit trading market and in an array of companies in bio-fuels, sustainable fish farming, electric vehicles and solar power.
Capricorn holds a major stake in Falcon Waterfree Technologies, the world’s leading maker of waterless urinals. Generation has holdings in Ausra, a solar energy company based in California, and Camco, a British firm that develops carbon dioxide emissions reduction projects. Kleiner Perkins has a green ventures fund with nearly $1 billion invested in renewable energy and efficiency concerns.
Mr. Gore also has substantial interests in technology, media and biotechnology ventures that have no direct tie to his environmental advocacy, an aide said.
Mr. Gore is not a lobbyist, and he has never asked Congress or the administration for an earmark or policy decision that would directly benefit one of his investments. But he has been a tireless advocate for policies that would move the country away from the use of coal and oil, and he has begun a $300 million campaign to end the use of fossil fuels in electricity production in 10 years.
But Marc Morano, a climate change skeptic who until recently was a top aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said that what he saw as Mr. Gore’s alarmism and occasional exaggerations distorted the debate and also served his personal financial interests.
Mr. Gore has testified numerous times in support of legislation to address climate change and to revamp the nation’s energy policies.
He appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April to support an energy and climate change bill that was intended to reduce global warming emissions through a cap-and-trade program for major polluting industries.
Mr. Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate advocacy, is generally received on Capitol Hill as something of an oracle, at least by Democrats.
I'm sure that there are more sources out there, and $100 million doesn't seem out of bounds for the minimum amount of money that he may have made through his "global warming" advocacy.
Care to educate me?
Of course, rule, but you have seen this before, in the Climategate thread over a year ago, specifically in post 333, where I brought it to your attention, and which you studiously ignored thereafter.
I've also mentioned Gore's "carbon credit" scheme back in 2007, here.
Firm
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Some people are just idiots.
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