You’re so green, you prob’ly think this song is about you.
WHO would have thought that saving the planet could be such a lucrative business? Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than £50m in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures.
Gore, 59, a failed presidential candidate, has already reinvented himself from the nearly man of American politics into the first global green celebrity. This week he will pick up the Nobel peace prize in Oslo before flying to Bali to take centre stage at the United Nations climate change conference.
Today Gore commands between £50,000 and £85,000 a speech, holds stock options in Google worth £15m and has made as much as £4m from advances on his book deals. He is also advising a US venture capital company on how to invest a $600m green technology fund.
He has come a long way since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W Bush when, according to official documents, Gore was worth just £1m. His biggest assets were his two homes in Nashville, Tennessee, and Arlington, Virginia, valued at £375,000, and £500,000 invested in oil company shares.
But rather than dwell on his disappointment, Gore threw himself into the world of business.
Another swindler in the news:
The Rev. Al Sharpton on Thursday angrily denounced reports of an investigation into his 2004 presidential bid and suggested that federal authorities were retaliating against him for his civil rights advocacy.
“I have probably been under every investigation known to man and I can’t remember a time that I’ve not been under investigation,” Sharpton said at the Harlem headquarters of his civil rights organization.
He continued: “The issues raised are issues that we’ve learned over and over again, particularly when we are approaching an election season.”
Newspapers reported Thursday that federal authorities subpoenaed financial records and employees in an apparent probe of his presidential bid, nonprofit civil rights group and for-profit businesses.
Sharpton said he thought the timing of the investigation was suspicious, coming just weeks after he led a march on the Justice Department to demand federal intervention in the Jena Six case in Louisiana and better enforcement of hate crimes.
Who’d have though race-baiting would be so lucrative?
I’ll have a blue mushroom without you. Come back, Jeff!
Do you mean that tax fraud and campaign finance law violations are not civil rights yet? What is this nation coming to?
I remember when Jesse Jackson called Republicans ‘race baiters’. That obvious projection shows that he knows exactly what he is. JJ and AS are the same person is why I bring that up.
What Al Gore spends just to heat one of his indoor swimming pools for one month is what I pay just to have electricity in my 400 sq ft for eight months.
Damn environmental imperialists, they never play fair.
my 400 sq ft
20’x20′? Must have to go outside to fart.
Hey, Dan.
If you know what “blue mushroom” means, you either have too much time on your hands, or else you are a wicked crackhead.
Either way, it’s OK with me. I’ve been both places somewhere along the line in my long and meandering life. Now I’m too old to contemplate either one of those possibilities.
If I have too much time on my hands, I fall asleep…and if I have crack on hand, I know it’s time to put that little lead pellet deep inside my ear. Akin to sleeping, I suppose…
Sharpton’s always been a disgrace. Hope he gets it good.
“Tawana Brawley” ring a bell, anyone?
Dude – AGW is a gravy train a huge number of people which is why they try to shut down skeptics at every turn. It’s never been about science. It’s all about power and dollars.
Sharpton and Jackson are shakedown artists pure and simple. Has Jackson filed the required returns for Rainbow/Push? Last time I checked he was years behind. Requiring people to file returns for nonprofit organizations is prolly a racist thing designed to keep the black man down according to Jackson. Call the Bambulance.
Heard an interesting aside on the radio today, someone was discussing the Sharpton thing and wondered aloud how Obama’s campaign may affect Sharpton and Jackson as the media’s preferred spokesmen for Black America. Regardless of how his Presidential bid turns out, it would be nice to see his relative reasonableness eclipse the blaxploitation of those clowns.
Heard a Gore quote on the radio this morning, about how AGW is a “moral issue”, not a scientific one or a political one.
Hey, Gore — keep your morals to yourself!
I am going to start selling carbon offsets to myself.
TLD–
There’s a great, very short story from an anthology called “Black Water,” can’t recall the author, but translated out of Spanish. There’s a man who suffers from insomnia. He can’t sleep, so he visits a friend who’s a doctor, who says he should try some camomile tea. He goes home, takes the tea. Can’t sleep. He visits a friend in the apartment building who recommends that he go for a walk. He goes for a walk, still can’t sleep. He tries several other things, and finally puts a bullet through his head.
And yet he still can’t sleep. Insomnia is very persistent.
Even though it is now shrouded in the mists of time, another month or so on the “Love Train”, and I WOULD have put a bullet in my head.
mojo –
“Tawana Brawley†ring a bell, anyone?
Reminds me of why you should never invite Tawana Brawley to your party.
Because she shows up shit-faced and half in the bag…
Mushroom bruise and cock slap are more direct, more to the point.
HATE CRIME!!!
Your comment, I mean. Not the phony-baloney hate crime that she concocted.
In related news, Gore begins to practice what he’s been preaching for the last half-decade.
Slart:
If my math is correct, Gore used his eco-millions to take a house that was a energy boar on steroids and reduced it to a 4H club champion energy sow. Yet the article slobbers all over him like a rack of freshly fried bacon.
So the f*@# what?
How typical, uncritical and, yes, I’ll stop with the pig metaphors now except…
OINK!!!
I agree, BJTexs. I thought it was amusing that Gore, whose home uses energy as if it’s completely free of consequence AND cost, has cut his home energy expenditures down a whopping ten percent.
All this, while he’s busy jetting off to Bali and Stockholm. The guy can multi-task, you have to admit, but you’d think he could use his own Internet to videoconference, instead of killing the Earth to go in person.
Or, you know, accept via an avatar in Second Life.
Possibly the reason is that videoconference food tastes just like what Tipper makes at home. And Second Life, they still haven’t got the food part right.
I could heat my house with a coal burning furnace, and cook over an open flame from oil-filled shale, for an entire year, and still not even come close to creating as much hazardous emissions as algore does in a week. His 10 percent savings are almost as much as our usage.
I just sold myself some more offsets. A few more transactions, and some gore-ish oil stocks, and I will be a green millionaire !
You go, JD!
FOR THE SWEATING CHILDRENSES!
I’ve got an idea, JD. You sell me some of those carbon credits, and then donate the cash back to my Earth Friendly non-profit as a charitable donation. We both get the tax credit, no money need change hands, and we’ll have both done our part to make the world a better and greener place.
Whadyasay?
let’s see…. 12 times the average use…. less 10 percent…. carry the one….
ha ha, I’m so bad at math.