Climate Change’s TV Evangelist, Al Gore is making Billions
Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses.
Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.
Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.
Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
For the rest of the article please go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html
Face Forward Comments:
Remember how you felt when you found out that a television evangelist with a great following got caught bilking the his followers of millions of dollars? That is how the nation should be feeling right now over AL Gore but no one is saying anything. It is well documented how much carbon his home estate and private jet fleet cost (in carbon dollars) to operate, but no one in his church cares.
It is really not to far of a stretch to see “Global Warming” as a religion and Al Gore thinking of himself as a pope. Not just a pope in the modern sense but a pope with medieval, pre-reformation papal powers. Remember the Spanish Inquisition? Here is a little something to brighten your day from a classic Monty Python.
I view Al and his church to be just as false as these so called church officials in the Monty Python skit. The difference is that Al is back by governments that see this as a huge opportunity to tax business, by organizations like moveon.org to get even the American Middle Class and folks looking for redistribution of wealth on an international basis. Their cry is, “down with Western Europeans they have had it too good for too long”.
The problem with Al’s new church Instead of taking up an offering from willing givers, this church is looking for the power to take your money. And this time the inquisition won’t be led by Terry Jones of Monty Python.
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