December 3rd / 5th
"The Globe Is Cooling to Al Gore"
Not long ago Al Gore was on fire, having won an Oscar, a Grammy, and the
Nobel prize. But adoration is fleeting, and the media is starting to
scrutinize his credibility. Last week Gore did nothing to help his cause when he
admitted that during the 2000 Presidential campaign, his advocacy for
corn-based ethanol was more about gaining the farm vote, than in improving the
environment. And that wasn't his only misstep.
In December of last year, Gore said that the Arctic ice caps would be
totally melted in seven years. But days later his own scientist Dr. Wieslaw
Maslowski refuted that statement. Perhaps we should have paid more attention
to Gore when, in May of 2006, he told GRIST magazine, "I believe it's
appropriate to have an over representation of factual presentations on how
dangerous it (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to
listen to what the solutions are".
It's no wonder that in October of 2007, a British judge banned Gore's
Oscar winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" from being shown in schools,
ruling that the film "contains scientific inaccuracies and political
mush". In fact there are so many inaccuracies in Gore's presentations that John
Coleman (founder of The Weather Channel) along with 9,000 scientists are
considering litigation against the former Veep for perpetrating lies about
global warming.
But the problem with Al Gore isn't so much that he lies, but rather why he
lies. Increasingly we are learning that his data debacles are driven by
greed and fueled by hypocrisy. For starters, Gore is a partner in Generation
Investment Management (GIM), which, according to Bill Hobbs of the
Tennessean, puts honest Al at conflict with his public persona of crusading for our
global well being. That's because Gore lobbied heavily for passage of the
Cap and Trade bill which is designed to reduce greenhouse gases for major
polluting industries by allowing them to buy or sell permits to emit those
gases. Sounds innocent enough until you consider that Gore, as head of GIM,
would essentially be buying carbon offsets from himself. Congressman Steve
Scalise and others were understandably concerned about this potentially
cozy arrangement, and caught Gore off guard during a hearing of the House
Energy and Commerce committee last April when they revealed that Gore's
original partner in GIM was none other than former Godlman Sachs CEO David Blood,
and that Gore's buddy Ken Lay (former Enron crook) first suggested the cap
and trade proposal to the Vice President back in 1997. Moreover, Gore is a
partner with Kleiner Perkins who, according to the NY Times "has hundreds
of millions of dollars invested in firms that could benefit from any
legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions".
OK, so all of this smells pretty bad, but what bothers me most is the
collateral damage caused by Gore's various proclamations and associations over
the years.
Case in point, his lobbying for the Cap and Trade bill. In addition to
providing Gore with potential profits from swapping carbon futures, the
legislation would also send jobs to India and China. Sound familiar? In 1993 Gore
was the cheerleader in chief for NAFTA, assuring us that free trade would
be good for America. Ross Perot tried to warn us that the Vice President's
data was faulty, but we wouldn't listen. Today, thanks mainly to Gore's
persuasiveness, millions of Americans have lost their jobs to third world
countries, and our nation's manufacturing base has all but disappeared, making
it impossible for us to fully recover from last year's devastating
recession.
After having the 2000 election stolen from him, Al Gore morphed himself
from political victim into a champion for the environment. But we now know
that Al is just a champion for Al. I don't know about the planet getting
warmer, but Al Gore sure isn't as hot as he used to be.
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