Al Gore’s Eco-Friendly Investment Firm Owns Shares In Polluting Companies
Author: Beverley Rayner
The “green-friendly” investment firm co-founded and run by former Vice President Al Gore, 74, owns a portfolio of more than $26 billion worth of shares in nearly two dozen companies that were found to have increased greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, according to a report. Gore, whose Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” cemented his status as the most prominent doomsayer on climate change, chairs the London-based Generation Investment Management, which touts a “stated emphasis on sustainable investment options.” But a recent analysis by Bloomberg News found that Generation’s Global Equity fund, which numbers a total of 42 companies, includes 18 firms which emitted increasingly more greenhouse gases annually between 2015 and 2021. Bloomberg ranked Generation, which has $40.4 billion worth of assets under its management, as among the companies that owned the greatest share of greenhouse gas-emitting firms when compared to other funds that placed a priority on so-called ESG - environmental, social and governance - investing. Becton Dickinson & Co, a medical device maker listed in Generation’s Global Equity fund, has seen its carbon footprint grow by more than 20% between 2015 and 2021, according to Bloomberg’s analysis. Amazon, the e-commerce goliath, is the biggest climate culprit. The Seattle-based giant only began releasing data about the amount of greenhouse gas it emits in 2019.
In 2021, as Amazon’s profits soared during the pandemic, so did the tonnage of greenhouse gases that it released into the air, according to the company’s own sustainability report. That year, Amazon’s carbon footprint grew by one-fifth.
Generation recently announced a shit in investment priorities. The firm sold off some of its holdings in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba while scooping up an additional 2.2 million shares in US chip manufacturer Texas Instruments, according to SEC filings.
Bloomberg ranked Generation, which has $40.4 billion worth of assets under its management, as among the companies that owned the greatest share of greenhouse gas-emitting firms when compared to other funds that placed a priority on so-called ESG — environmental, social and governance — investing.