Kleiner Perkins: Al Gore and Colin Powell, Together at Last to Save the Planet

December 3rd, 2007

“You won’t have the clean technology without a total, fascist lockdown. I’ve said it from the beginning, and I’m saying it now. The technology to build the techno green utopia has been around for easily thirty years. Sorry folks, that’s not how it went, and that’s not how it’s going to go. The primacy of new killing technologies and technologies of political control go hand in hand with the clean energy systems.

The Blackwater USA mercenaries and the Global Warming fart tax crowd are on the same team, whether they realize it or not.”

Cryptogon, December 1, 2007

I think Al and Colin realize it.

But can you feel the clean, green love yet?

Forget the technology. What kind of political and economic system are the limousine liberals and the four star generals creating here? (Rhetorical question.)

Via: Fortune:

It’s lunchtime on Sand Hill Road, and Al Gore wants answers. “How does the efficiency decline with latitude?” he asks. “What size community could be served by one plant? If a manufacturer like GE wanted to make smaller turbines, would the technology support a smaller scale?”

We’re sitting in the giant conference room at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where the partners hold their weekly meetings. After loading his plate with Chinese food from a buffet, Gore is firing detailed questions at the management team of Ausra, a Kleiner-backed company in Palo Alto whose technology uses mirrors the width of a flatbed truck that focus the sun’s energy to generate electricity.

Once Gore is satisfied — sunlight lags north of South Dakota, an Ausra plant can serve 120,000 homes, and yes, smaller turbines will work fine — he shifts from inquisitor to fixer. He was chatting with California Senator Barbara Boxer “on the way over,” he reports, and he isn’t optimistic that Congress will extend the tax credits Ausra has been relying on. On the upside, he offers on the spot to organize a summit highlighting the company’s solar thermal technology to educate lawmakers and other policymakers on its potential. He also thinks a powwow at General Electric would be beneficial, even though Ausra is a tiny customer.

“I know Immelt well,” he says, referring to GE’s CEO. “We ought to set up a meeting.”

Gore appears utterly comfortable with this drill, but in fact he’s engaging in some on-the-job training. The recovering politician, environmental activist, and Nobel laureate is adding another title to his résumé: venture capitalist. After “a conversation that’s gone on for a year and a half,” according to Gore, he has decided to join his old pal John Doerr as an active, hands-on partner at Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley’s preeminent venture firm.

The move is more than another Colin Powell moment (the former Secretary of State signed on as a Kleiner “strategic limited partner” two years ago and has hardly been heard from since). Gore is joining the firm as Kleiner makes a risky move beyond information technology and health-care investing into the fast-growing and increasingly competitive arena of “clean technology.”

Related: The General and the Holy Grail of Energy Storage Devices

Related: EEstor: More Clues Emerge

6 Responses to “Kleiner Perkins: Al Gore and Colin Powell, Together at Last to Save the Planet”

  1. Eileen says:

    Maybe I read too much.
    Maybe I think too much.
    But why does this story really scare me and/or make me want to puke?
    Someone get me a bucket!
    Al Gore and Colin Bowell?
    Didn’t Colin Bowell go to Aspen when “Ken Lay died?” HA HA. If that guy is dead, I’m 6’2″.
    And Al Gore, a venture capitalist, I mean vulture.
    Something about Al loading his plate.
    This whole thing makes me sick.
    I mean what does he care?

  2. pookie says:

    Al Gore. Just the kind of guy I’d like to stuff my weisswurst casings with.

  3. il says:

    Eileen, I had the EXACT same thoughts (and involuntary spasms, as I assume you had) as I read the piece, too…

  4. Ebbing says:

    ” Vice President Al Gore’s Jr.’s daughter Karenna Gore, was recently married
    to Andrew Schiff. Andrew Schiff is a descendant of JACOB SCHIFF.

    Jacob Schiff was the Jewish New York City banker and traitor to America
    who financed the communist revolution in Russia in 1917.

    Jacob Schiff gave $20 Million Dollars in Gold (worth Five Hundred
    Million, $500,000,000.00, in 1999 dollars) to LEVI BRAUNSTEIN, also known as
    Trotsky, and Vladimir Ilich Blanc Ulanyoff, also known as Lenin.

    Vice President Al Gore Jr. is the son of former United States
    Senator Al Gore Sr, whose major benefactor was Armand Heimer [aka Hammer],
    who in turn was the son of Dr. Julius Heimer [aka Hammer], founder of the
    American Communist Party. “

  5. Cloud says:

    Yes, Al Gore loading his plate with maybe 1000 Calories worth of Chinese food, which consumed, as we know, around 10 000 Calories worth of petrol in its production.

    The tragedy of the commons is truly merciless.

  6. Loveandlight says:

    and the Global Warming fart tax crowd

    If I had to pay a fart tax every time I cut one, I would be so poor! 😛

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