Global Warming is Gore's Retirement Plan

From an article in Investor's Business Daily:

Environmentalism: Gore's carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla's, but he eases his conscience with 'carbon offsets.' He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.

This carbon offset scam is just that - a scam. It produces nothing, it does not reduce carbon emissions and it only serves to line the pockets of those hooked into the econoscam.

Say you want to fly your Gulfstream private jet across the country regularly to Hollywood premieres instead of taking a Greyhound bus. You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like invest it in windmills and solar panels to 'reduce' carbon emissions by an equivalent amount. Your are then declared 'carbon neutral' as you continue to pollute.

So while the hippie is happily polluting, the not-for-profit is stealing it. Or you can own the carbon offset business itself and pay yourself to use that private jet. Plus a nice salary as executive director or any other title that pops into your thieving brain.

Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm called Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.

And there's the rub. The shell game is already set up, the screaming loons are in motion to stifle debate, the scientists have been bought through grants and the UN smelled the bribes a thousand miles away and- through the IPCC - are partners in the scam.

The number of companies jumping into this market has multiplied. In 2006, at least 60 sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from a dozen firms selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004. That's a lot of green.

That's a lot of stupidity, and a lot of hippies with guilty consciences. And they want to force you to join them.

Skeptics of this scheme — perhaps we should call it a scam — include, interestingly enough, Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a group working on the reduction of greenhouse gases for the U.N.'s International Panel of Climate Change. 'What these companies are allowing people to do,' said Rayner, 'is to carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience.'

This is not about conscience or the climate, it's about cash.

Gorebucks that is.

3/13/07 UPDATE:

One of the commenters (thanks Fred) was kind enough to leave this link to the Cyber News Service, where the company spokesman denies that Gore is profiting from carbon offsets.

Al Gore is not profiting from his crusade against global warming, a spokesman for an investment firm co-founded by the former vice president said Tuesday.

Gore's London-based employee-owned company, Generation Investment Management (GIM), purchases -- but isn't a provider of -- carbon dioxide (CO2) "offsets," said spokesman Richard Campbell.

GIM is strictly an investment firm that considers how eco-friendly corporations are in assessing long-term sustainability, Campbell told Cybercast News Service by phone from London.

Fair enough. We'll listen.

The confusion, Campbell said, arose because GIM pays to offset the energy use of its operations and the personal emissions of its 23 employees, including Gore.

So, the firm will cover the cost to offset the energy use at Gore's home, or his global jet travel, as it would the offset cost of any other employee, Campbell said.

So the confusion is that Gore doesn't profit from his crusade but that GIM pays for the carbon offsets so that Gore doesn't have to? Gore still derives a benefit from GIM, namely, Gore can say that he lives a "carbon neutral" lifestyle but doesn't have a pay a cent for it because the company he founded pays for it. Ahhhhhh, I think I smell a profit here. The profit being that cheapskate Gore skates on the carbon offset and pockets the difference.

The fact that Gore's Nashville home runs up electricity bills averaging $1,200 per month was publicized last week by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

I don't spend that much for electricity in a year and a half. But I don't claim to be carbon neutral either. And who runs GIM that enables Al "I Hate Carbon" Gore to make this claim at no cost?

The president of GIM's U.S. operation is Peter S. Knight, who served as Gore's chief of staff in the U.S. Senate and later as campaign manager for the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign in 1996.Knight is a controversial figure.

In 1999, Republicans on the House Commerce Committee asked then U.S. Attorney Janet Reno to investigate whether a $1 million payment to Knight from a Tennessee developer was an illegal contingency fee for helping get the Federal Communications Commission to move to the development.

Knight and the developer, Franklin Haney, said the payment was for legal fees for Knight's work on several projects. Reno declined to investigate.

I can't speak for the reader, but this certainly does not inspire confidence in me. And since Gore refuses to disclose his income, there is no way to see what other "benefits" Gore is reaping form his association with GIM. But there are other considerations. GIM is an investment firm that takes money that Al Gore doesn't give them and "invests" it for him in eco-friendly businesses.

> We buy high quality businesses and management teams whose securities are attractively priced to deliver excess returns over the long-term.
> Generation's strategy is to invest in long-only, global, public equities with a concentrated portfolio of 30-50 companies.
> We Buy High Quality Businesses: Dominant market positions, strong entry barriers, predictable future, pricing power, and secular growth trends
> With High Quality Management Teams: Culture of Integrity, respect for shareholders, well managed for the long term
> At the Right Price: Key to our success is our price discipline and the ability to buy companies at sufficiently attractive prices to deliver performance

My take on this is simple. Remember Hillary Clinton's spectacular success in the futures market?

On October 11, 1978, the future First Lady, a neophyte investor with an annual income of $25,000, opened a commodity-futures account with a deposit of $1,000.

Her first trade was the short sale of ten live-cattle contracts at a price of 57.55 cents a pound: a commitment to deliver in December of that year 400,000 pounds of cattle with a market value of $230,200. One day later, she bought the contracts back at a price of 56.10 cents, just 0.15 cent above the low of the day, pocketing $5,300 for a return of 530 per cent.

Mrs. Clinton continued to be a net winner at the game. By the time she closed her trading account ten months later, she had racked up $99,541 in profits, a spectacular 10,000 per cent return on her initial investment of $1,000. Either Mrs. Clinton was a better trader than the legendary George Soros, whose best-ever annual return in thirty years of trading was 122 per cent, or she was led by an invisible hand.

Looks like Al Gore did learn something from the Clinton's after all.

He learned how to cover his scheming ass.