Drudge posts more BS about Al Gore - Democratic Underground

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Thu May-25-06 02:41 AM
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Drudge posts more BS about Al Gore

Drudge has an attack video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (the group funded by Exxon Mobil et al which has been attacking "global warming alarmists" in general and Gore in particular) which claims Gore's a hypocrite for flying all over the planet to promote global warming:

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

What Drudge doesn't know (pretends he doesn't know) is that "An Inconvenient Truth" (both the movie and the book) have been certified carbon neutral by NativeEnergy. And Gore personally lives a carbon neutral lifestyle.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore.html?pg=4&topic=gore&topic_set=

The Resurrection of Al Gore
By Karen Breslau
Wired Magazine May 2006

(snip)

The Gores and all the employees of Generation lead a "carbon-neutral" lifestyle, reducing their energy consumption when possible and purchasing so-called offsets available on newly emerging carbon markets. Gore says he and Tipper regularly calculate their home and business energy use - including the carbon cost of his prodigious global travel. Then he purchases offsets equal to the amount of carbon emissions they generate. Last year, for example, Gore and Tipper atoned for their estimated 1
million miles in global air travel by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project.

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Additionally, Gore's chair of an investment firm that's working to change the world business model to reduce global warming. From earlier in the same article:

(snip)

For all the early hype surrounding Current TV, the commercial venture that excites Gore most these days is Generation Investment Management, his global fund. As governments begin imposing carbon caps on businesses, Gore says, free markets will reward companies that practice environmental sustainability. The result: reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. "As soon as business leaders get global warming or the environment at large," he says, "they start seeing profit opportunities all over the place. There is so much low-hanging fruit right now, it's just ridiculous." So much, in fact, that early this year venture capitalist Doerr announced that his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, would launch a $100 million green-technology fund. "Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," he said.

Though Generation invests in a wide range of companies, Gore and his team are especially bullish on the energy sector. We're on the verge of "a real gold rush" in renewables, conservation, and software for identifying and eliminating waste, he says. "The whole economy is going to shift into a much more granular analysis of which matter is used for what, which streams of energy are used for what. Where does it come from? Where does it go? Why are we now wasting more than 90 percent of it?" Gore shakes his head. "The investments in doing it right are not costs - they're profits."

Make no mistake: Generation's strategy is to beat the market, not just to feel good about socially responsible investing. Gore's partner at the firm, David Blood, is a legend in the London investment scene. He retired as CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 2003, at age 44, after helping grow its assets from $50 billion to $325 billion in just seven years. He, too, was casting about for a way to incorporate environmental and social values into traditional investment analysis. The concept wasn't an easy sell on Wall Street. "As soon as you say 'sustainability,' some people will roll their eyes and say, 'These guys are tree huggers and they run around in sandals and they aren't serious investors,'" says Blood. "But once they listen, there is no one who says this doesn't make sense."

(snip)

As an example, Gore cites a Generation report on the auto industry. Researchers analyzed traditional metrics, including sales and labor costs, but they also looked at the degree to which profits depended on high carbon output. Two years before it became clear how badly General Motors and Ford were performing, the Generation team calculated that Toyota, a more carbon-conscious company with better labor relations, would gain a $1,500 advantage per vehicle as government-mandated fuel efficiency and carbon emission standards come into effect. GM's reliance on gas-guzzling SUVs made money in the short term. But the company's inability (or refusal) to position itself ahead of the coming carbon-regulation regime economy was a barometer of poor strategic thinking.

Generation likes to use this sort of nontraditional analysis. When considering an investment in an energy company with operations in the Rocky Mountain area, for instance, fund analysts looked to community blogs, where they found considerable local opposition to the company's strategy. "That business plan had a huge vulnerability that was outside the scope of its financial reports," Gore says. "I often say, 'It's really just common sense.' But common sense is not as common as it should be. Our whole mission is to make it mainstream."

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