April 02, 2008
Climate-Change Campaign Questioned
The Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank, is questioning the motives behind former Vice President Al Gore’s advocacy campaign to garner public support to stop climate change.
The three-year, $300-million campaign, which started this week, will be run by the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit organization in Menlo Park, Calif. Mr. Gore is estimated to have contributed $2.7-million to the effort.
But the center, in Washington, suggests that the former vice president could benefit financially from the campaign as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a private company in London that invests in environmentally friendly businesses.
On the center’s blog, Matthew Vadum, editor of the think tank’s publications, writes that the investment company has “considerable influence” over carbon-credit trading groups and that if the new advocacy campaign succeeds in convincing Americans to support carbon-emissions trading, “Al Gore will be uniquely positioned to cash in.”
However, Richard Campbell, a spokesman for Generation Investment Management, called the suggestions a “nonsense story.”
In an e-mail message to The Chronicle, he writes that neither Mr. Gore nor any other members of the investment company’s board will make money from the expansion of carbon trading.
“To suggest then that they are somehow benefiting from the growth of this industry betrays a complete lack of knowledge of the carbon offset industry,” he writes.
What do you think?
— Ian Wilhelm
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It is preposterous to assert that the Chairman of an investment company would not seek to profit from an expansion of its industry.
— Gianna Splitstoser Apr 3, 01:19 PM #
It’s not hard to imagine that Gore and his Partner David Blood have a vested interest in promoting the global warming ‘emergency’ because their company:
“…sees climate change creating an entirely new business stratum, he said (Blood), similar to that surrounding the so-called Internet economy — ”
from:
http://www.marketwatch.com/
— Michael G. Apr 4, 03:34 PM #
Gore… a name that will echo through history!
Just like Ponzi.
— heldmyw Apr 6, 03:37 PM #
Al Gore should start up a brand new corporation called Global Warming Inc.
— Free Thinker Apr 7, 04:33 PM #
By attacking the messenger, you avoid the message that the planet is in serious trouble from CO2 (that is up 36% over what it should be.)
Who doesn’t want the Alliance to tell the message—Exxon-Mobil—and the big oil monopolies with record excessive profits and big coal that wants to keep polluting…
What’s new here?
— Ben Ayers Apr 7, 07:18 PM #
CO2 has been much higher in the past, Ben. Before man arrived. Do your homework.
— Bob Murphy Apr 7, 08:48 PM #
If Gore were to divest himself of all interests in the carbon credit/offset business, he would increase his credibility…..however, this may happen after hell freezes over.
— John Burdick Apr 7, 09:49 PM #
Mr. Vadum has responded to this blog item on the Capital Research Center’s blog.
— Ian Wilhelm Apr 8, 10:53 AM #
We should all be concerned about pollution and toxic waste, but CO2 is not pollution.
CO2 is only 0.038 % of the atmosphere, and only about 5 % of that is man made. There really is not much CO2 in the air.
CO2 IS NATURAL AND GOOD: We all produce CO2 every time we exhale. Trees take in CO2 and produce oxygen from it. If we somehow removed all the CO2 from the atmosphere all plants would die the same day, and human extinction would follow.
The simplistic notion that “CO2 causes global warming and controls climate” is equivalent to saying “hot dog sales cause recessions and control the economy “. It’s a childish oversimplification of an extremely complex topic.
If there was no greenhouse effect Earth’s temperature would be -30 C degrees, and essentially uninhabitable.
Peace to all – and don’t believe anyone who tells you humans can control Earth’s climate.
— Norm Smith Apr 8, 10:20 PM #
And yet, with all of this, the goofballs of America still desire to follow him.
For me the tip off, and I know it occurred for others at different times, was the Occidental Oil stock profits he made after he took the national reserves in California away from the Government, mainly the Navy and other military, and converted those oil fields into commercial oil production.
I was astounded those so easily sucked into this global warming mass hysteria, orchestrated by this sleight of hand artist, missed the event entirely. Of course this was before he invented Global Warming like he did the Internet as well.
Good article, keep up the good work.
— Dave Hardesty Apr 22, 04:17 PM #