Only Skeptics Are Driven By Money

Or not:

Noel Sheppard’s got the goods on Al Gore.

For years, NewsBusters has contended that Nobel Laureate Al Gore is spreading global warming hysteria to benefit his own wallet.

On Wednesday, despite claims by one of Gore’s representatives two months ago, it was revealed that his Generation Investment Management private equity fund has taken a 9.5 percent stake in a company that has one of the largest carbon credit portfolios in the world.

Can the IRS please tell me how Al Gore can get away with having the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection do all the PR heavy lifting for his for-profit investments?

Note that carbon credits are a zero-value asset unless by government fiat they are declared to have some value.  In the absence of global warming legislation and cap-and-trade schemes, this company’s portfolio is worth nothing.  Only the lobbying by Gore and his "non-profits" can make it have value. 

Interestingly, this carbon credit portfolio also has zero value even under alternative CO2 reduction alternatives, such as a carbon tax.  Under a carbon tax, there is much less opportunity for rent-seeking by powerful people like Gore, and carbon credit portfolios are worthless.  Interestingly, Gore proposed a US carbon tax 15 years or so ago.  My guess is that he would no longer support a carbon tax, as it would bankrupt many of his investments.

4 thoughts on “Only Skeptics Are Driven By Money”

  1. “Only Skeptics Are Driven By Money”. At least that’s what Gore would have us believe.
    It’s an interesting irony that Gore quoted the socialist Upton Sinclair in his science fiction movie:

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding.”

    Gore was talking about skeptics supposedly funded by Big Oil, but as it turns out he could have been talking about himself.

    What a hypocrite – and a liar.

    I posted on this today at my blog.

  2. Gore’s controlling interest and ownership in Generation Investment Management raises very serious securities law/price manipulation questions, particularly in light of the new regulatory zeal resulting from the subprime mess.

    Mr. Blood knows this, and needs to be very careful here. Mr. Campbell is already guilty of making at best a misleading statement on its face (Generation invests in companies that engage in environmentally “friendly” policies and projects designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so it is perfectly logical to expect that they would benefit from this) and at worse a material misrepresentation.

    If the regulation Mr. Gore so adores is good enough for everyone else in the financial industry, it’s good enough for him, and he’s going to have to answer some pretty pointed questions shortly.

  3. This is why I have taken to referring to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Act as The Al Gore Enrichment Act. I think that the wealth transfer that will occur as a result of this act is NOT the type Democrats posture as favoring; Democrats make a big show of ‘helping’ the ‘little man’, yet here the ultimate result will be a massive transfer of wealth from low and middle income groups to Al Gore via his fund scheme that’s designed to make money off cap and trade.

  4. Do not forget Enron. Enron geared up for a cap & trade system when Kyoto hit the scene back in the Clinton Administration. When Kyoto was killed, this put a crimp in Enron’s business plan. Ken Lay bet his company on it. Of course, the Enron fraud was Bush’s fault (yeah right, it was Clinton/Gore’s fault). Algore is personally betting on cashing in when a cap & trade system gets implemented here. Thanks to a stupid Supreme Court ruling, this is only a matter of time. McCain and Obama have bought into the CAGW hoax and are pushing disastrous remedies for a null problem.

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