Al Gore’s inconvenient truth: Ex-Veep’s $30bn ‘green’ investment fund includes stakes in gas-guzzling companies like Amazon and Microsoft
- Generation Investment Management owns $12 billion in companies whose issuances have risen
- Amazon increased its carbon footprint by 40% between 2019 and 2021
- Former Vice President Gore is a dedicated climate change activist.
The environment-driven investment fund founded by former Vice President Al Gore owns $12.1 billion in shares of companies whose carbon emissions have increased in recent years.
Gore, a green warrior who served as Clinton’s vice president from 1993 to 2001, founded Generation Investment Management in 2000 on the promise of sustainable investing.
According to the analysis of Bloomberg46 percent of the companies in the firm’s largest fund, comprising an investment of $26.4 billion, have increased greenhouse gas emissions between 2015 and 2021.
Generation’s investments fell from $39 billion to $30 billion last year.
The funds in your Global Equity Portfolio that have rising or increasing gas emissions represent just over a third of your total holdings.
The ecological warrior Al Gore with Greta Thunberg. Gore is a dedicated climate change activist who founded Generation Investment Management in 2000 with the specific goal of investing in green businesses.
Gore, a green warrior who served as Clinton’s vice president from 1993 to 2001, founded Generation Investment Management in 2000 on the promise of sustainable investing.
The worst culprit is Amazon, whose carbon footprint grew 18% between 2020 and 2021, and a whopping 40% between 2019 and 2020.
Amazon only started disclosing its emissions in 2019. In 2021, its footprint was 71.54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
Microsoft is another of the 18 companies in Generation’s global equity fund.
Its emissions grew by 21 percent between 2020 and 2021.
Another is Becton Dickinson & Co, a medtech company whose emissions grew 20% between 2015 and 2021.
While gas-guzzling companies make up less than half of Generation’s largest fund, their considerable carbon emissions pose an uncomfortable truth for a fund that is built on the premise of driving positive green change.
A Generation spokesperson told DailyMail.com in a statement that the companies it invests in do significantly better than average on the MSCI global carbon emissions index.
“Companies in Generation’s global equity portfolio emit approximately 75% fewer emissions than the benchmark,” they said.
They also pointed to the fact that company emissions can increase for a number of reasons, including company growth or a difference in how companies measure their footprint.
Gore is a committed climate change activist who has been warning people about the “planetary emergency” we find ourselves in since 2001.
His documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Oscar in 2001 for Best Documentary and Best Original Song.
“I’ve been trying to tell this story for a long time and I feel like I haven’t been able to get the message across,” he said in the film.
Generation also owns shares in Carlisle Cos, Adidas and Charles Schwab.
Gore promoting his climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2007
