Surprise! Al Gore stands to gain from the cap and trade legislation that he’s backing! No wonder Democrats oppose domestic oil production.
Gateway Pundit has the story:
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) challenged Al Gore’s motives for supporting climate change legislation including his links to a firm that will make millions from cap and trade:
Funny… During that same hearing Gore compared global warming skeptics to fraudster Bernie Madoff.
Video clip:
More from The Hill:
Blackburn noted Gore’s role as partner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm that invests in technology to address global warming.
Blackburn asked Gore if he stood to benefit financially from cap-and-trade legislation, which would force companies to reduce carbon emissions. Companies would likely turn to the kinds of technologies Kleiner Perkins helps develop.
“This bill is going to fundamentally change the way America works.” Given the magnitude of those changes, I think it’s really important that no suspicion or shadow fall on the foremost advocates of climate change legislation. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of clear the air about your motives and maybe set the record straight.”
Transcript:
BLACKBURN: I’ve got an article from October 8th, the New York Times Magazine about a firm called Kleiner Perkins. A capital firm called Kleiner Perkins. Are you aware of that company?
GORE: (LAUGHS) Well yes, I’m a partner at Kleiner Perkins.
BLACKBURN: So you’re a partner at Kleiner Perkins. OK. Now they have invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap and trade legislation. So is the legislation that we’re discussing here today, is that something you are going to personally benefit from?
GORE: I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us. And I have invested in it. But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a non-profit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness about why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you’re, if you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.
BLACKBURN: I’m not making accusations. I’m asking questions that have been asked of me. And individuals, constituents that were seeking a point of clarity–
GORE: I understand exactly what you’re doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does.
BLACKBURN: Well, are, you know, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit? Does all of it go to a not-for-profit that is an educational not-for-profit.
GORE: Every penny that I have made has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy. I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?
The Heritage Foundation has more on Al Gore’s testimony here.
I blogged about the increases we can expect in energy prices here.
Read my lips. Cap and trade is a tax on energy consumption: (H/T Gateway Pundit, The Heritage Foundation)
Remember Al Gore’s house?
So much that last August Tipper and Al Gore used twice as much electricity in their two-building property as an average U.S. household uses in an entire year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a think tank, reported Tuesday.
Public power and gas bills turned up by the group show that the man behind the Oscar-winning global warming wakeup documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” uses much more overall carbon-based fuel than the average American, spending thousands of dollars a month on electricity and gas.
An inconvenient truth.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I thought Gore made Blackburn look very bad and transparently partisan.
LikeLike
It cost 41 cents per kilowatt hour to generate electricity with solar. Contrast this with 3 cents per kilowatt hour with coal. We will have to create a significant “price” difference to make solar more “economical”. No one is talking about the cost to everyday Americans. Blue colar industries like trucking, farming, fishing, and an array of manufacturing plants will be adversely impacted. Grandma Jones will have an electric bill at least twice what it is today.
This smacks of centralized government planning of the economy.
LikeLike
Doug…I actually agree with you that we should be thinking carefully about the costs of solar v. other energy sources (including but not limited to coal). That said, there are two things worth thinking about on the price of solar. One is that the cost has been coming down significantly as the technology improves, and will likely continue to do so as more solar cells are produced. The other is that, if you believe that CO2 emissions are costly to deal with (which many people, including myself, do), then the comparison is only fair if you include those costs in the cost per kwh. That is what various forms of carbon taxes are, in principle, trying to do.
LikeLike
I find it amusing that when Gore doesn’t have an intelligent, substantiable answer, he attempts to turn to conversation around and attack the person asking questions. Blackburn was asking valid questions that people wanted to know the answers too. Not that this isn’t something we’ve seen before from Gore anyway. He stands to benefit a great deal from cap and trade at the expense of the American people. Write your Representatives in Congress at http://tiny.cc/OC9vB and encourage them to question this legislation that will have such negative impacts on the American people.
LikeLike
Gore doesn’t have an intelligent, substantiable answer? He just said he donates every penny to a non-profit alliance. Even if he didn’t Gore knows that climate change is something that has to be addressed, so why wouldn’t someone invest in an industry that stands to grow in the future? As he said – he was fighting for this call back in the 70’s. Good grief.
LikeLike