[osint] Gore Financially Invested in Climate Cause

Al Gore..a scumbag politician getting rich…who’d have thought?

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http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200805/NAT2008051
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Gore Financially Invested in Climate Cause
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
May 14, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - Weeks before announcing a $300-million, three-year
advertising campaign to raise awareness about global warming, Al Gore was
conducting a slide show for a group of investors in Monterey, Calif.,
touting companies such as Bloom Energy, Amryis , Mascoma and other firms
that are not household names — yet.

These bio-fuel and green technology firms could be poised to take off, Gore
told his audience.

"Here are just a few of the investments I personally think make sense," he
said during the March 1 presentation. "I have a stake in these so I’ll have
a disclaimer there." (See Video )

Gore’s admitted stake in those companies
comes from his
partnership in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
(KPCB). Gore joined the firm last November, forging a partnership between
KPCB and the London-based Generation Investment Management, a firm Gore
chairs, and which steers investments in green and "sustainable" companies.

This month, KPCB announced
it has invested $500
million into start-up "green growth" companies, and another $700 million
into more established greentech, information technology and life science
ventures.

The seed money is intended to "grow" the companies so they can be publicly
traded. Both funds are closed to further investment. Last week, Generation
Investment Management reportedly closed a $683-million "Climate Solutions
Fund" to further investment.

The firms, with similar goals, differ in that GIM focuses mostly on public
equities, while KPCB focuses on startup or expanding companies that haven’t
gone public yet.

But without government action on climate change, some business analysts say
green companies backed by KPCB are either unlikely to be profitable or that
their growth will be slow.

To Gore’s critics, his financial stake in businesses that could profit from
government policies designed to fight global warming demonstrates a
motivation other than a selfless desire to protect the planet.

Gore has lobbied Congress and state governments to enact bolder
environmental regulations. Gore’s defenders counter that he and his partners
are simply looking at companies that will have long-term sustainability
during the "climate crisis."

"There are a bunch of folks that stand to make real money, who have invested
a lot in companies that are not worth real money until the agenda that this
ad campaign is advocating is achieved," Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-enterprise think tank, said in an
interview.

Companies in the KPCB portfolio, as start-up companies, might be in greater
need of a helping hand from government policy changes, but the larger, more
established firms in the GIM portfolio also could benefit if the government
manipulates the current market by mandating alternative fuels or imposing a
cap and trade system.

As a private citizen, Gore is not required to publicly disclose how much of
his personal fortune is invested in the venture capital firm. KPCB
spokeswoman Brianna Woon declined to say how much Gore had invested in the
firms, and she said the firms couldn’t comment at this time on whether the
greentech companies can succeed without government action.

Lack of government action could delay profits, but the free market is
nonetheless moving toward clean energy on its own, said Gary Patterson, an
analyst with the Fiscal Doctor Inc., of Wellesley, Mass. He predicts a good
return for the venture capital firm’s green investments.

"It would be very helpful if you have government initiative. Without it, it
will take longer for these to be economically viable," Patterson told
Cybercast News Service

However, Bert Ely, a financial analyst with Ely & Associates of Alexandria,
Va., is skeptical that the kind of green investment portfolio Gore is
advocating can be profitable without government action. History has shown
green companies to be risky ventures, he says

"Wind power, solar and bio-fuels all operate on tax subsidies or purchase
requirements," Ely told Cybercast News Service. "The government stimulates
demand. The most notorious subsidy is the 51 cent gas credit for ethanol."

"To the extent that you got some kind of government mandate here, whether it
is cap-and-trade or a purchasing requirement, a taxpayer subsidy, to me
that’s a dicey way to look for a return on a venture because what the
government giveth it can taketh away — and often does," Ely said. "You’re
making a political bet, not an economic bet."

(A cap and trade system would set limits on the amount of carbon a company
can emit. The limits are

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