The New York Times has recently printed an article noting the vast amount of wealth Al Gore is making from his environment-promoting investments
Basically, Nobel-prize-winning, former American Vice President Al Gore …
1. is a partner of a venture capital firm called Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which provides capital for Silicon Valley companies and the like.
2. Kleiner Perkins backs the company SILVER SPRING NETWORKS, which makes hardware and software for efficient electricity grids, to the tune of $75 million.
3. SILVER SPRINGS NETWORKS has retained Al Gore and another partner of Kleiner Perkins as unpaid corporate advisors.
4. Last week, the U.S. Energy Department announced that $3.4 billion would be set aside for smart grid grants. More than $560 million of this will go to utilities with which SILVER SPRING has contracts.
5. This means that Al Gore and his firm Kleiner Perkins will mostly likely make tons and tons of money.
6. Some Republicans are unhappy about this. They claim him to be a “carbon billionaire” profiting from policies he supports. Note: Gore does not actually endorse or promote anything as a paid elected official. He is a private citizen with no representational obligations.
7. Some Republicans have insinuated or outright accused Al Gore of unethically profiting from recent initiatives – basically saying that Gore had intentionally promoted causes specifically because those causes are linked to his own investments.
8. Right-wing pundits on the radio and in the blogosphere are going crazy about “the Global Warming Scam” and are comparing Gore to Ponzi scheme defrauder Bernie Madoff.
TO THE DETRACTORS: Give me a break. Gore is only putting his money where his mouth is. What do they expect him to do -- invest in coal? Yes, he's making a lot of money out of it. But it’s not “dirty” money, it’s clean – pun intended. As he is no longer an elected official, he doesn't have conflict of interest issues to deal with (nor should he). This is NOT Halliburton and Al Gore is NOT Dick Cheney. Know the difference. Furthermore, Al Gore did not spend the last 8 years educating the world about global warming as some sort of convoluted, unnecessarily arduous strategy to make more money through Kleiner Perkins – that would be ludicrous. And understand that Global Warming is not a part of some vast, enviro-fascist conspiracy propounded by an international cabal of greedy meteorologists, marine biologists, and wildlife refuge caretakers.
3 comments:
Yeah, really. I saw Gore on Rachel Maddow last night, and he said, in so many words, "I put my money where my mouth is." He also donates all his profits from these particular investments to an organization that supports clean energy (or something sustainable like that.) He said that no matter how he handled that situation, his detractors would find some way to condemn him, so the heck with it, he's doing what he believes in.
The Republicans are just really, really pissed off that Gore is able to stick to his beliefs AND profit from it as well. Good for him. Much of the money he is making is going right back into various "green" initiatives and organizations he's established or is affiliated with. Ralph Nader does the same thing - invests and converts the profit over to his various organizations. Smart.
Seems like Republican capitalists are also able to stick to their beliefs and profit from it. (Fat-cat bankers, Cheney and his ilk.) If you believe global warming is a fraud and we can do whatever we want with the Earth because God said “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28), then hey, investing in offshore drilling or a strip-mining company or Union Carbide is doing God's work.
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