OPINION:
One way to gauge the success of global warming activists is to count how many fossil-fuel-burning homes they collect.
For some, the climate change industry has to be one of the most lucrative professions on Earth, which, by the way, is in danger of failing any year now unless we depopulate. Can you imagine the roundup?
For others, it’s a way to take existing wealth and turn their dollars into political power.
We’re in a hysteria lull right now between the tornado-summer heat-hurricane season and the winter rain and snow deluge, so let’s look at some of the biggies.
Former Vice President Al Gore, the movement’s chief alarmist, set the standard. After losing to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000, he left the vice presidency with a net worth of perhaps $1.7 million.
Today, press accounts put his total assets at about $300 million. He was helped a lot by selling his cable TV channel in 2013 to oil-and-gas mega-producer Qatar. Yes, Al got richer off fossil fuels. He has also been paid for writing books on Earth’s coming demise. The Arctic should have disappeared in 2016, he predicted.
He owns or has owned two big homes — his mansion in Belle Meade, Tennessee, for which he added solar panels after being shamed as an energy glutton, and an $8.8 million (2011) Pacific Ocean paradise in glittering Montecito, California, where the stars like Mr. Gore live.
Steve Milloy, who blogs his climate change findings at Junkscience.com, says Mr. Gore paved the way for federal climate giveaways such as President Biden’s billions in global warming subsidies that make more people rich.
“Al Gore blazed the trail for the climate gravy train which, with the $1.2 trillion for climate subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, is now a gravy bullet train,” Mr. Milloy told me. “Given that emissions are not being reduced and the weather is not being improved, never will so many have gotten so rich off taxpayers from doing so little for them.”
People who view tyranny-laden climate change as the biggest hoax ever don’t expect warriors like Mr. Gore to live like troglodytes.
But they do ask, why not set a better example? Do you really need multiple homes? And private jets and yachts?
“John Kerry Financial Disclosure Report Shows Hypocrisy and Greed,” blared the Boston Herald headline about the Biden climate czar’s 2021 filing.
Turns out his up-to $15 million investment portfolio was heavily invested in oil companies, his supposed worst enemy to Earth and mankind. And he flies around in a family private jet, which (the secret is out) is propelled by oil.
Besides the jet, Mr. Kerry and his Heinz heiress wife own multiple homes, cars and a yacht.
I have not totaled up their carbon footprint, but I wonder if it is higher than that of the average farmer whom Mr. Kerry has castigated for using too much carbon to deliver the food we need to survive.
Mr. Gore and Mr. Kerry like to lecture us. Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates uses his enormous wealth to rule us.
Worth over $100 billion, he lives in a $130 million waterfront mansion with a mythical name: Xanadu 2.0. Perhaps the name is a celebration of its 24 bathrooms. He also spent millions buying land next to him so as not to be bothered.
Mr. Gates is investing in our culinary future. He wants us to eat insects and fake meat. He has bought farmland on which I doubt there will be cows. He also invests in technology to dim the sun, which gives us two fundamentals: heat and light.
He has also owned with ex-wife Melinda a $43 million beach house in Del Mar, California, that sits right on the Pacific Ocean, which one day, climate alarmists say, will flood us. There is also a Gates mansion in Indian Wells, California, according to housebeautiful.com. And a list of properties in Florida and Montana.
I don’t see a total emissions count for Mr. Gates, who has to have the Sasquash of homeowner carbon footprints.
When then-Sen. Barack Obama clinched the presidential nomination in 2008, he modestly declared this “was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.”
More than a decade later, does he really believe sea levels were such a danger? Not by what he’s buying.
In 2019, he spent $12 million on a 29-acre oceanside estate on Martha’s Vineyard, complete with a private beach.
A few years later, Barack and Michelle also constructed a multimillion-dollar mansion in Hawaii, complete with a sea wall that worsens beach erosion.
Before the two seaside mansions, the Obamas bought a D.C. estate for $8 million. With the White House a short jog away, the base camp literally made Mr. Obama a shadow president.
The couple also still own their Chicago home. That’s four of them.
Tom Steyer ranks second in alarmism to Al Gore. He told The Wall Street Journal in 2020 that the “climate crisis” forced him to put his San Francisco mansion on the market for $11 million. Disputing Hemingway, he said the sun no longer rises.
In September, a vacationing Mr. Biden left his Delaware beach mansion behind and rented Mr. Steyer’s Lake Tahoe mansion.
The Biden-Steyer marriage underscores how important it is for the president to get rid of our gas-fired pizza ovens. Mr. Biden’s climate war keeps the campaign cash flowing from Mr. Steyer and other oligarchs.
Mr. Steyer, a hedge fund maestro, has given tens of millions of dollars to elect Mr. Biden and other Democrats. This ensures that they keep pushing extreme climate policies on average Americans who, unlike Mr. Steyer, struggle with a family budget.
The Steyer-founded NextGen Climate Action Committee super PAC raised $40 million for the 2020 election cycle, all to either promote Democrats or bash Republicans.
In all, he donated more than $55 million for Democrats and liberals in that cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with the Washington Times.
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