Imagine if in America there were a coal mining magnate as famous as Donald Trump who was the founder of a political party named after himself (Trump United Party?). In addition, this well known person would be strongly opposed to a carbon tax. Obviously such a person would be considered an enemy by environmentalists. Well, think of the shock if none other than Al Gore held a friendly joint press conference with such a person. Many would suspect that money was the motive for such a strange alliance.
Guess what? Something like this happened last week in Australia where Al Gore appeared with Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer at a press conference. Although Palmer, a founder of the Palmer United Party in Australia, opposed the soon to be repealed carbon tax, Al Gore suddenly and mysteriously found common ground with him. Naturally the Australian press found Gore's new-found friendship quite suspicious. First we have a report from Annabel Crabb of The Age in Australia at the shock of the people there at seeing Gore and Palmer together on stage:
An image, once seen, cannot be unseen. Just ask Anthony Wiener, the US congressman whose amateur photography of his own wedding tackle – optimistically dispatched over social media to a Seattle college student – brought about his untimely political downfall.
Used correctly, an image can fill in the gaps between spoken words. And never has that been more richly proved than on Wednesday night, when Clive Palmer managed to inveigle former US vice-president Al Gore into sharing a platform with him and thereby managed – for a few magical hours – somehow to convey the impression of himself as a climate messiah.
The presence of Gore, surprising enough in itself, supplied a wordless assurance to any observer; this must be a big announcement on climate change policy, because it was made in the presence of the biggest global name in climate campaigning, and surely he would not be such a prawn as to let himself be drawn into a scam?
And after the shock of seeing these two highly unlikely allies together, come the suspicion by a Liberal MP member (Liberal Party in Australia is conservative) in The Australian that a strong hypocritical profit motive on the part of Al Gore was involved.
LIBERAL MP and climate change sceptic Dennis Jensen claims Al Gore will personally profit from Clive Palmer’s new climate policy, saying the Nobel laureate “would do anything and say anything for a buck”.
Dr Jensen also likened the former US vice-president and leading climate activist to a member of a fictional, profit-obsessed alien race in the Star Trek movie and TV series.
Mr Gore last night commended the Palmer United Party’s policy of abolishing Labor’s world-leading carbon tax, while retaining the Renewable Energy Target and Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Dr Jensen, speaking in parliament, said the joint media announcement proved Mr Gore “would do anything and say anything for a buck”.
“One question that must be asked … is what investments Al Gore might have that might prove lucrative by retaining the RET and the CEFC,” Dr Jensen said, under the protection of parliamentary privilege.
“Investigation of these schemes and what organisations are getting advantage, and whether Gore has shares in those companies, would prove no doubt that Gore has a pecuniary vested interest in those schemes.”
Dr Jensen claimed Mr Gore’s personal carbon footprint was “probably larger than a number of small towns in some parts of the world”.
“Start believing Al Gore when he actually lives the carbon-dioxide-constrained lifestyle he advocates for everyone else,” Dr Jensen told parliament.
“He lives in a mansion in Tennessee where he consumes 20 times as much energy as the average American household, and Americans are not renowned for being parsimonious in their energy use. But that is only one of many houses that Al Gore has.
“Then there is Gore’s jetting around the world, once again a huge carbon footprint.”
Dr Jensen told parliament Mr Gore sold his television network, Current TV, to the Qatar state-owned satellite news network, Al-Jazeera.
“He was paid in petrodollars, despite all of his raging against the evils of the fossil fuel industry, around $70m profit. A nice little earner,” Dr Jensen said.
“Gore is not really earnest enough about the evils related to global warming to forgo profit, however hypocritical that makes him.
“For those who watch Star Trek, there is no one he reminds me of more than the Ferengi species, where profit is the first, last and only important factor.”
Dr Jensen, a former CSIRO research scientist, accused Mr Gore of telling “blatant untruths” about climate change.
“He is either science illiterate, or he is quite happy to spew whatever unscientific climate nonsense he needs to further enrich himself,” he told parliament.
p.s. "Wedding tackle?" Must file that away for future reference.
