Al Gore, Green Investment, An Inconvenient Truth

So, had not really paid attention to this one before, but since 2004 Al Gore has been a partner in a private investment fund. The purpose of the fund? To generate returns by investing in companies which are positioned to benefit from a "green" economy.

Massive conflict of interest in then being a cheerleader for the effects of climate change? Not exactly from the goodness of his heart...

http://www.generationim.com/about/

On a related note, a couple great excerpts from a editorial on Copenhagen etc:

"The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale too."

...

"This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6767076.html