http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449910/al-gore-inconvenient-sequel-self-serving?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-07-27&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
When I first spied the headline of this article, I thought it read "An Incoherent Squeal" Turns out that this would have been a more accurate title.
From the article:
Quote:It isn’t the only time in An Inconvenient Sequel that Gore proves disingenuous. Throughout the film, he never hints that he has a financial interest in the technologies he’s promoting. A firm he co-founded, Generation Investment Management, was a very early investor in Elon Musk’s company SolarCity and held an $80 million stake in it as of 2013, according to the finance site Insider Monkey. Gore portrays SolarCity as a first-rate outfit, both in itself and because the company supposedly pushed the Paris Climate Accord over the top with a bold, philanthropic decision to share its solar-panel technology with India, which then withdrew its objections and signed the agreement. (Earlier Gore is seen browbeating India’s energy minister, who, not without wit, tells Gore to get back to him in 150 years, when the coal-powered country can afford the luxury of renewable energy.) Gore doesn’t tell us that SolarCity ate up billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies before its stock price tanked, at which point Musk folded the company into Tesla in an all-stock deal, meaning any shares Generation had in SolarCity stock turned into Tesla stock. Oh, and Gore’s only son, Albert Gore III, served as deputy director, policy and electricity markets–finance for SolarCity and now works in Washington for Tesla, according to LinkedIn. If you’re wondering why Tesla requires a Washington office, or why it might enjoy having politically connected people working for it, there are about 4.9 billion reasons why. It’s hard to imagine Tesla (in which, Gore told Insider Monkey in 2015, he personally held shares) would even exist today without its ability to transmute climate-change hysteria into government subsidies.
Quote:... would we buy Gore’s argument that he has always been on Team Green from anyone else? If Warren Buffett insists that he genuinely liked Coca-Cola as a kid (and still does), does that somehow mean he doesn’t have a conflict of interest if he tries to use his government connections to win a contract for Coke now that Berkshire Hathaway, of which Buffett owns about 19 percent, holds 400 million shares of Coke? How did Gore get to be the only corporate oligarch in America (net worth: $300 million) whose blatant conflicts of interest are mostly ignored by the media?
Quote:As for the strong implication in the film that Gore prompted SolarCity to do a favor for India that got the country on board the Paris agreement, “I am not aware of any such linkage, and neither are my colleagues in the negotiating team,” a top negotiator from India’s delegation told the online newsletter E & E News. The negotiator added that in the 20 months since the agreement, “SolarCity has not come to India.” SolarCity, E & E News reported, has never issued a press release to take credit for what Gore’s film depicts and did not respond to its reporter’s request for comment.
Quote:Gore’s ability to frame everything in terms of how it relates to his crusade is what really resonates through the film. When terrorists kill 130 people in Paris on the eve of the summit, a massacre that threatens to postpone the climate talks, Gore gets emotional because he sees it as a personal “setback” for him. He tells grieving Parisians that we need to fight back with military force but also with “values” — which is how he segues into . . . his climate-change talking points. You can see the relief when Gore learns the conference will go on as scheduled. More than a hundred people were killed by Islamists, and to Al Gore, the situation was really inconvenient.
And to think that I once believed this guy might make a good president. Almost voted for him over Bush back in 2000, but eventually the oily nature of his character seeped out through his pores and I ended up voting for the Libertarian candidate (whomever the hell he was).
It's ironic, but at the time I had concerns that W was just another unqualified clown who was allowing himself to be thrust into the White House by handlers who remained behind the curtain. I should have had more faith in the son of the very decent George H W Bush whom I always liked and voted for when he ran the first time, as it was proven that the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree...regardless of what you might think of him as president.
Gore is the classic political sociopath who is entirely self-absorbed and remains focused solely on his personal interests.
His wife Tipper got a bad rap with her efforts to have parental warnings placed on the packaging of music CDs with obscene lyrics. Considering the misogynist, violent and coarse language featured in a lot of hip hop music of that time, the effort was entirely reasonable and laudable, however certain members of the music industry like
intellectual stalwarts Dee Snieder, Jello Biafra and John Denver (of all people) testified before congress and branded her a censor, which of course she wasn't. Alas one of my musical heroes Frank Zappa joined the band in painting her as prudish scold. Considering that the effort had nothing to do with banning sales their arguments were ludicrous and, I believe, largely based on either the knee jerk hysterical reaction of "artistes" and a concern about reduced sales. Ironically, Tipper is a talented drummer who has sat in at concerts; playing drums with the Grateful Dead, Willie Nelson, and Herbie Hancock.
She has been a tireless advocate for children, mental health awareness, the homeless and the LGBT community. In 2010 she apparently finally saw the light and dumped her wooden tool of a husband.
