Al Gore: A Wired Magazine Profile

Run, Al, run. Finally got around to reading this nice profile, he seems to be having a lot of fun these days:

... For all the early hype surrounding Current TV, the commercial venture that excites Gore most these days is Generation Investment Management, his global fund. As governments begin imposing carbon caps on businesses, Gore says, free markets will reward companies that practice environmental sustainability. The result: reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. "As soon as business leaders get global warming or the environment at large," he says, "they start seeing profit opportunities all over the place. There is so much low-hanging fruit right now, it's just ridiculous." So much, in fact, that early this year venture capitalist Doerr announced that his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, would launch a $100 million green-technology fund. "Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," he said.

Though Generation invests in a wide range of companies, Gore and his team are especially bullish on the energy sector. We're on the verge of "a real gold rush" in renewables, conservation, and software for identifying and eliminating waste, he says. "The whole economy is going to shift into a much more granular analysis of which matter is used for what, which streams of energy are used for what. Where does it come from? Where does it go? Why are we now wasting more than 90 percent of it?" Gore shakes his head. "The investments in doing it right are not costs - they're profits."

Make no mistake: Generation's strategy is to beat the market, not just to feel good about socially responsible investing. Gore's partner at the firm, David Blood, is a legend in the London investment scene. He retired as CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 2003, at age 44, after helping grow its assets from $50 billion to $325 billion in just seven years. He, too, was casting about for a way to incorporate environmental and social values into traditional investment analysis. The concept wasn't an easy sell on Wall Street. "As soon as you say 'sustainability,' some people will roll their eyes and say, 'These guys are tree huggers and they run around in sandals and they aren't serious investors,'" says Blood. "But once they listen, there is no one who says this doesn't make sense."

... The Gores and all the employees of Generation lead a "carbon-neutral" lifestyle, reducing their energy consumption when possible and purchasing so-called offsets available on newly emerging carbon markets. Gore says he and Tipper regularly calculate their home and business energy use - including the carbon cost of his prodigious global travel. Then he purchases offsets equal to the amount of carbon emissions they generate. Last year, for example, Gore and Tipper atoned for their estimated 1 million miles in global air travel by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project.