How Much Money Has Al Gore Made On Climate Change

Al Gore has long been a knight of the movement to combat climate change. But when he returned to the national spotlight last month with his latest documentary, "An Inconvenient Sequel," he did so in gilded armor.

The former vice president ― who boasted a relatively minor net worth of $one.7 million, held by and large in family unit farm assets, when he ran for president in 2000 ― has become a media mogul and financial titan over the past decade, with a personal fortune valued at upward of $200 1000000. His large improvement comes months afterward a populist wave swept President Donald Trump to a surprise ballot victory, setting the stage for the most aggressive rollback of environmental and climate policies in history.

If Trump's billionaire status bolstered his appeal to voters, Gore's business acumen might amplify his warnings at this moment.

"The world faces an extremely serious fiscal hazard due to the $22 trillion in subprime carbon avails that are going to lose value at some indicate precipitously, but every bit the subprime mortgages did," Gore told HuffPost in a xiv-minute telephone interview from London last calendar week. "Of form, that's what triggered the credit crisis and the Great Recession."

But for some people, the best person to imbue climate change with the urgency information technology needs may not be a rich, broker-friendly liberal who rode shotgun in a White House that brought about trade deals so vilified that Trump won over traditionally Autonomous Rust Belt workers past vowing to renegotiate them.

"He is a flawed character," Stephen Lacey, editor-in-master of the magazine GreenTechMedia, said on his podcast "The Energy Gang" terminal calendar month. "We're in an era of backlash against elites, then Gore, a guy who bought a 6,500-square-foot seafront home in California for $eight.8 meg, and who hangs around with other celebrities who talk big on climate but who live lavish lifestyles, is the perfect target at this point in fourth dimension."

The critique hits at a pressure point in mainstream climate change messaging. The causes of climate change are articulate: burning fossil fuels, industrialized farms and destruction of the forests that capture carbon and shop carbon. Simply the solutions, and who should be responsible for them, are far less clear.

With other environmental causes, such every bit recycling or brute welfare, it'south easy to phone call on individuals to change their beliefs ― carry a reusable water bottle, or purchase muzzle-free eggs and gratis-range beef. As a result, in that location'south a tendency to utilise the same formula to climate change, as though the crisis can be averted by plenty ordinary people putting solar panels on their homes, buying electrical cars or forgoing distant travel to relieve the jet fuel. In that framing, the wealthy, jet-setting course ― with their warm, palatial homes and intercontinental trips ― acquit the most responsibility for adopting a climate-conscious lifestyle.

That's a fair critique, though i Gore's right-wing critics have exploited to the point of burnout. The same outlets that frequently air the opinions of pseudoscience-hawking skeptics who flout the testify that climate change is real, serious and preventable too pillory Gore for the size of his carbon footprint.

The appearance of hypocrisy is not lost on Gore. Gore admitted he talks to his wealthy friends about the sacrifices dealing with climate change may require.

"Yeah, of course," he told HuffPost when asked. He noted that airline tycoon Richard Branson, whom he called a friend, was working to make jet fuel greener , though his efforts drew criticism in 2014 for being underfunded.

"Information technology's a tough one," Gore said with a sigh. "Simply I'm hopeful."

In that location's an statement to be made that it doesn't matter , that Gore'southward efforts to push button for systemic and policy change are all that count. That may prove true. Merely as long every bit his films elevate him as a spokesman for the climate message, information technology's impossible to ignore his merits as a messenger.

Gore has long been a political punching purse on the right, and his efforts as an environmentalist have attracted mockery and rebuke from the political campaigns funded by the fossil fuel billionaires Charles and David Koch. Part of the problem is that Gore carries heavy political luggage.

"Many people out there simply cannot compartmentalize and say, 'I loathe and detest Al Gore the politician because of his liberal politics, but when he talks about climate change, he's got a existent point,'" Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, told HuffPost. "Equally a messenger, he makes it besides easy for conservatives to refuse the unabridged concept of climate alter, let alone the policies that might accost information technology."

Simply by not addressing his wealth head-on, Gore does petty to assuage critics who may not be partisan but read mendacious motives into his climate gospel.

It doesn't have to exist that way. Gore ― the white, straight son of a landowning Tennessee congressman ― may be someone who "came from historical privilege," said Elizabeth Yeampierre, a New York-built-in Puerto Rican attorney and environmental justice leader, just "he can own that."

"People respect that kind of honesty and authenticity when you say, 'This is how I came into this,'" said Yeampierre.

Contrary to the claims of correct-fly critics, the profits generated from Gore'southward best-selling climate books and film ― 2006'due south blockbuster "An Inconvenient Truth" grossed $24 million at the box function ― were directed to the Climate Reality Project, his foundation focused on battling global warming.

Gore made most of his money off things that have cypher to exercise with his climate activism. In 2000, his nest egg took the grade of an inherited family farm and royalties from a zinc mine, co-ordinate to Bloomberg. In 2004, he founded Generation Investment Management, a sustainability-focused fund. The firm got a major heave in 2007 when it partnered with Silicon Valley-based venture capital behemothic Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers to "find, fund and accelerate greenish business, technology and policy solutions with the greatest potential to assistance solve the current climate crunch."

"He would be way more than influential if he admitted to anybody he'south been putting his money where his mouth is. He is still in this pol mentality."

- Jigar Shah, renewable free energy investor

The firm lost money on some early investments, such every bit the at present-defunct Chicago Climate Substitution and Get-go Solar LLC, a solar panel maker crushed by competition from inexpensive Chinese imports in the early on 2010s. Just the company bounced back, and its $ane.2 billion Luxembourg-based fund at present vastly outperforms the S&P 500. In March, the fiscal magazine Barron's declared : "Al Gore is winning at investing."

But Gore made the bulk of his money as a media mogul and an Apple board member. In Jan 2013, he pocketed about $lxx million later taxes from selling the Current TV network he co-founded in 2004 to Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera. He's earned tens of millions more than in contempo years by selling off Apple tree stock awarded when he joined the tech giant's board of directors in 2003.

"He would be way more influential if he admitted to everyone he'due south been putting his money where his oral fissure is," Jigar Shah, a top clean energy investor, told HuffPost. "He is still in this politician mentality."

To his credit, Gore is making a push to influence investors, particularly with this latest movie. "An Inconvenient Truth" grew out of a seminar series Gore was giving at the fourth dimension. For "An Inconvenient Sequel," Gore crafted a three-hour presentation on clean energy investment, and scheduled roughly a dozen screenings in Geneva, London, New York, Palo Alto, Sao Paulo, Paris and Republic of india for top executives at firms such as BlackRock, Capricorn Investment Group and Citigroup to encourage aggressive shifts away from fossil fuel ventures and toward solar and wind infrastructure.

"We absolutely talked about exactly what Mr. Gore is advocating, and obviously has real experience in," Participant Media CEO David Linde, whose social-good-focused production company produced both of Gore'due south movies, told HuffPost by phone. "If y'all added up all the avails nether management by the 400 or and so people who went to these, information technology's $19.six trillion."

Where Gore's wealth damages his brownie as an activist, it bolsters his influence as a pitchman. He's a natural for a role that requires fluency in the sorts of buzzwords and phrases heard at events similar the annual World Economic Forum confab in Davos, Switzerland.

"The opportunities for renewable free energy and electrical vehicles and battery technology and hundreds of new efficiency technologies are collectively the biggest business organisation opportunity in the history of the earth," Gore said. "Nosotros are in the early on stages of a global sustainability revolution that has the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution but the speed of the digital revolution."

That kind of rhetoric is central, Shah said. At this point, the only people with a stake in actively denying climate change are those with money on the line, and partisan diehards. The latter may never be convinced, and the erstwhile demand to come across more opportunities in burgeoning industries such equally solar or current of air energy. Solar alone created 1 in every 50 new U.Due south. jobs last yr, employing 260,077 in 2016, an increase of more than than 51,000 jobs over the previous yr.

"We have more people wanting to join our tribe," Shah said. "We need to cease kowtowing to the people in their [pro-fossil fuels] tribe. Nosotros need to focus on deploying more stuff, and Al Gore is key to deploying more stuff."

Gore seems to recognize this. In a recent interview, he quoted Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 classic The Jungle exposed the horrors of the meatpacking industry in Chicago and ultimately fueled reform efforts: "It is hard to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his non understanding it."

"Rather than hide from his wealth, he should talk virtually information technology more, and talk about the opportunities in solar power," said John Cook, a inquiry assistant professor at George Bricklayer University's Heart for Climate Change Communication. "It'south merely polarizing in the sense that it gets criticized by opponents of climate activity considering it's effective. You take to recognize the fact that the forces of the status quo will come after annihilation that'south constructive."

"Regardless of whether yous like or dislike him, the net effect that he's had has been overwhelmingly positive by mobilizing then many people who reach people Al Gore would never accomplish," he added. "You lot tin't dismiss his contributions just [considering] he makes conservatives cranky."

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/al-gore-wealth_n_599709f2e4b0e8cc855d5c09

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