Al Gore just made $70 million from oil & gas profits, but he says Canada spews pollution into Earth's atmosphere as if it were 'an open sewer.' Gore's false and insulting statements about Canada and its relationship with the US are also unbecoming a Nobel Peace Prize winner

5/7/13, "L. Ian MacDonald: Al Gore should know better," MontrealGazette.com

"In an interview with the Globe and Mail, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore referred to Canada’s oil and gas riches as a “resource curse” and said the Alberta oilsands add “to the reckless spewing of pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere as if it’s an open sewer.”

Gore speaks as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his efforts to educate the world on climate change. This would be the same Al Gore who recently sold his cable-TV network, Current, to Al Jazeera for $500 million. Al Jazeera, of course, would be the network owned by Qatar, which produces and exports oil....

Everyone understands that the environmental movement in the U.S. is using the oilsands and the Keystone XL pipeline project as leverage for a larger conversation on climate change.

And in politics, you have to make the usual allowances for hypocrisy. But there are limits, especially from advocates like Gore, who has been on this issue since before he invented the Internet, and should know better than accuse Canada of treating the atmosphere like an open sewer. Not only is it insulting; it's untrue.

Nor do these activists take account of the importance of energy exports to the Canadian economy, the importance of Canadian energy imports to the U.S. economy, and the political importance of Keystone to the relationship between the two principals — the U.S. president and the Canadian prime minister.

Energy is now far and away the largest segment of Canadian exports, and the U.S. accounts for more than 99 per cent of our exports of oil and gas. Since 1992, according to BMO Economics, Canada’s oil and gas exports to the U.S. have increased from $17 billion to $102 billion, from 11 per cent of Canada’s world exports to 22 per cent.

As U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson has himself said: “Canada is the largest supplier of every form of energy to the United States.”

As he noted, Canada supplies the U.S. with 100 per cent of its imported electricity, 85 per cent of its natural-gas imports, and 27 per cent of its oil imports — 

more than twice as much as the 12 per cent of U.S. oil imports supplied by Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, in the energy chapter of the free-trade agreement, we guaranteed the Americans security of supply in return for security of access. It’s the considered view of Brian Mulroney, the father of free trade, and Derek Burney, who negotiated it, that the U.S. is violating the spirit if not the letter of the agreement in delaying approval of Keystone.

Or as (Alberta Premier Alison) Redford puts it in her forthcoming magazine interview: “It’s quite clear that we promised to be good suppliers if they promised to be good customers.”

"L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy magazine (policymagazine.ca)." via Tom Nelson

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5/6/13, "Gore Is Romney-Rich With $200 Million After Bush Defeat," Bloomberg, Wells and Levy

"He made an estimated $100 million in a single month. In January, the Current TV network, which he helped to start in 2004, was sold to Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Satellite Network for about $500 million. After debt, he grossed an estimated $70 million for his 20 percent stake, according to people familiar with the transaction."...

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