Green-industrial complex gets rich from carbon laws

THE word environmentalist usually conjures images of down-at-heel campaigners in tie-dyed T-shirts who eat only organic muesli. In truth, going green has become big business. We are witnessing the emergence of a green-industrial complex, an alliance between national governments, corporations and powerful individuals that is using the politics of fear to transform the economic and political worlds. For a snapshot of the government and business interests intertwined in the rise of green capitalism, consider Al Gore. He's getting rich from environmentalism, not just by being paid a whopping $US175,000 ($217,500) a speech but by using political pressure to force government policy in a direction that benefits his business interests. Gore is chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, an outfit that seeks to "persuade people of the importance, urgency and feasibility" of going green. It recently launched a $US300 million ad campaign to coax American people and politicians to embrace the carbon-lite lifestyle. But Gore is also chairman of a greeninvestment firm called Generation Investment Management, which is a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international collaboration of businesses and science bodies, and which invests in firms that produce renewable energy and low-carbon technology. So Gore uses one of his multimillion-dollar organisations, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to put pressure on government to promote the low-carbon lifestyle that will furnish one of his other multimillion-dollar organisations, General Investment Management, with booming business. Read more.