Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth

The eco-driven investment fund founded by former Vice President Al Gore owns $12.1billion in shares of companies whose carbon emissions increased in recent years.

Gore, an eco-warrior who served as Clinton’s Vice President between 1993 and 2001, founded Generation Investment Management in 2000 with a promise of sustainable investing.

According to analysis by Bloomberg, 46 percent of the companies in the firm’s largest fund – which comprises $26.4billion in investment – have increased greenhouse gas emissions between 2015 and 2021.

Generation’s investments fell from $39billion to $30billion last year.

The funds in its Global Equity Portfolio which have rising or increased gas emissions account for just over a third of its total holdings.

Gore, an eco-warrior who served as Clinton’s Vice President between 1993 to 2001, founded Generation Investment Management in 2000 with a promise of sustainable investing

The worst culprit is Amazon, whose carbon footprint grew by 18 percent between 2020 and 2021, and a huge 40 percent between 2019 and 2020.

GAS-GUZZLING COMPANIES THAT GORE’S FUND INVESTED IN

AMAZON

The worst culprit.

Amazon’s emissions grew by 40% between 2019 and 2021

MICROSOFT

Emissions grew by 21 percent between 2020 and 2021

BECTON DICKINSON & CO

Emissions grew by 20% between 2015 and 2021

Amazon only started revealing its emissions in 2019. In 2021, its footprint was 71.54million 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 medical tech company whose emissions grew by 20% between 2015 and 2021.

While the 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 eco-change.

A spokesman for Generation told DailyMail.com in a statement that the companies it invests in fare considerably better than the average on the MSCI World Index of carbon emissions.

‘The companies in Generation’s Global Equity portfolio emit approximately 75% less 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 the way companies measure their footprint.

Gore is a committed climate change activist who has been warning people of the ‘planetary emergency’ we are 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 as if I’ve failed to get the message across,’  he said in the film.

Generation also owns shares in Carlisle Cos, Adidas and Charles Schwab.