Gore, Greentech, Greenbacks

‘If you are a big utility or a big energy company that has made a lot of money in a very high oil price environment, then you will have money to spend…..
Whatever their motivation is, it provides a much-needed avenue for investment and growth.’   One of Al Gore’s investment principles.

 

You may be aware that the Climate Change cabal have opened up a new front in their war against the Sceptics…..not content to have the BBC, amongst many other media organisations, batting for their side they are encouraging the closure of ‘comments’ or the radical censorship of comments on pro AGW blogs or web reports should they be of an inconveniently sceptical nature.

Taking a look at many of their thoughts on this matter, the BBC itself as we know has already limited what you can say, if anything at all, I came across Al Gore’s ‘Reality Drop’ green propaganda site (RealityProp?) which I’m certain someone has mentioned in the comments here before….illustrating how useful the comments section is as always.

I may look more closely at the Green’s desire to blackout any sceptical views in another post but Al Gore interests me.

The BBC are never happier than when pillorying a Banker, or a ‘Bankster’ as John Pienaar delights in calling them…or successful businessmen  or posh politicians.  The BBC aren’t so keen to mention the multiple millions earned by the filmstars that grace their screens or Graham Norton’s couch…or indeed Graham Norton’s own hefty wage, or the actress who earns £10,000 for a 1 minute voice over…nor the financial affairs of Labour’s Margaret Hodge…nor the affairs of the sainted Al Gore.

Which is funny really because Gore must certainly qualify to be in the ranks of the filthy rich businessmen that the BBC like to portray as plundering the world’s resources and reducing everyone else to penury as thy do so.

Just for starters look at his new venture….not one designed to make money, at least on the face of it…but set up to attack Sceptics and swamp websites with the ‘approved’ Al Gore Climate Script.

Look at who set up the website for him….was it Greenpeace or WWF?…no…it was a worldwide advertising conglomerate, Arnold Worldwide,  that has just taken on Volvo cars as a client……

 

‘With Volvo repositioning itself as a luxury brand, suddenly they’re not such a “safe” choice any more. Our work is designed to get consumers to take a second look and see for themselves just how far the formerly boxy and boring brand has come.’

Not only Volvo, luxury Volvo at that, as a client, but McDonalds as well.

Guess Al Gore must have been holding his nose whilst dealing with them…just as he must do when he looks himself in the mirror….and not just because he sold out his media company to oil rich Qatar and walked away with $100 million of money made from dirty old oil.

Wind farms are wonderful things, but they don’t work too well and need to have gas or coal fired power stations on line to back them up…which must be 90% of the time.

Just like wind farms Al Gore’s famous ethical investment company also needs backing up by ‘dirty’ industry.

The Companies Gore invests in publically.

Al Gore talks a lot about ‘sustainability’ but he is using a sleight of hand, so to speak, to mislead us…. ‘sustainable’ for most of his investments doesn’t mean ‘green’ just reliable, long term investment rather than making a ‘quick buck’ selling for instant profit…..it really means a company run efficiently in all areas….and if the future looks like governments will impose green legislation then companies that take account of that in their planning get another tick in the box…but not because they are ‘green’,  merely that they look ahead to plan for  future likely problems.

Gore set up Generation Investment Management along with Goldman Sach’s banker David Blood (and apparently Mark Ferguson, Alex Ferguson’s son)…alongside GIM they have set up ‘Climate Solutions Funds’ which aims for specifically climate related industry.

‘This is not a touchy-feely, new age approach.  The idea is that the long term prospects for companies are affected by a host of intangible factors.  Some of these include social issues such as the environment.  But they also feature subjects such as corporate governance, brand management, personnel relations and geopolitics.
Its approach is not the same as an ethical fund because it will focus on finding companies that can benefit from intangible factors rather than eliminating whole categories of companies…so could still invest in tobacco, alcohol, arms or oil.’

GIM is a big investment fund which essentially has few green credentials, it invests in big business regardless, if it makes money:

‘That, after all, is why they created Generation. Unlike earlier “green” and “ethical” investment funds, which screened out “bad” companies, effectively sacrificing financial return for purity, Generation set out to outperform the market by finding firms that it expected to do better than average over the long term.’

‘According to Richard Campbell, speaking for GIM, the form “is from Generation’s Global Equities Fund, which is not a greentech fund, hence the lack of greentech stocks in it — it is a fund that invests in a broad range of global equities.” Campbell added, “Generation does have a greentech fund — its Climate Solutions Fund — but this invests in mostly private companies, hence there are no 13F filings.”‘

‘Sustainability’ is just a ploy, a tool, to make as much money as possible.

GIM doesn’t invest in project development it just parasitically leeches off those who do taking none of the major risks of investing in a new project:

‘Project development and the financing of renewable energy projects is out, purely for the capital-intensive nation and risk associated with such a project. Le Duc says, ‘We do not invest in project development, we invest in the picks and shovels, support services and the people who are benefiting from these new developments, but which are less capital-intensive. That would also point us towards the carbon space, owning companies like the exchanges, or businesses that focused on analytics. We like intellectually heavy, capital-light, IT-based models.’

Al Gore’s GIM isn’t too fussy about where the money goes as long as it makes money….

‘If you are a big utility or a big energy company that has made a lot of money in a very high oil price environment, then you will have money to spend. You may also have a strategic mandate to build the renewables portfolio, or to decarbonise your energy mix a bit. We are certainly seeing big energy and utilities buying up a lot of companies – not just the typical energy companies but also other industrial companies like Siemens, Danaher and GE.
‘Whatever their motivation is, it provides a much-needed avenue for investment and growth.‘

 

All that sustainable investment must be paying off, in 2010 the pay cheques were quite impressive:

‘David Blood, president, chief executive and co-founder of socially responsible asset manager Generation Investment Management with former US vice-president Al Gore, was awarded a 39% pay rise last year after a strong 12 months for sustainable investing. He took home £10.7m. Profits at the asset manager in the year to the end of last December rose 55.8% to £49.1m, and it currently has approximately $7bn under management, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
Generation’s 20 partners were paid a combined £49.4m, up from £31.6m in 2009.’

 

 

Gore certainly does invest in green tech but he has a much bigger portfolio of non-green industry backing him up and providing the real profits.

 

The BBC’s Harrabin and Co are always ready to investigate the sources of climate sceptic website’s funding….somehow implying the source of funding negates their arguments….but it seems all too unwilling to look at Gore’s finances when it can be seen that they come mainly from big industry fuelled by oil, coal and gas….the very antithesis of what he preaches.

Gore is a ‘big business’ businessman…as trustworthy as any other big business businessman…..shame we can’t trust the BBC to report equally on both.

 

Ironic this last link from the BBC:

‘Former US Vice President Al Gore has said US politicians serve the interests of wealthy industries, rather than the interests of the public.

Speaking to Sian Williams on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he added that television coverage of current affairs “selectively represents information that is paid for”.’

 

Update:

WUWT climate website did a story on ‘RealityDrop’ last year…it wasn’t successful then…and seems to be no more successful now:

Al Gore’s ‘Reality Drop’ is a bomb – so let’s give him a ‘hockey stick’

 

The video has all time:

• 7,746 Plays
• 6 Likes

Wow.

 

Hope he didn’t pay Arnold Worldwide too much money for that!