Gore warns Wall Street of ‘subprime carbon’ industry

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/15/gore-warns-wall-street-of-%e2%80%98subprime-carbon%e2%80%99-industry/

Gore warns Wall Street of ‘subprime carbon’ industry.

In remarks before a “high-profile business crowd,” Al Gore compared the financial risks facing investors in carbon-based industries with the meltdown in the house market for subprime mortgages given to people with blemished credit records or low incomes. Gore said:

You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you — as my longtime good redneck friends in Tennessee say, I guarandamntee you — that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime carbon assets. <…>

The assumption that you can safely invest in assets that come from business models that assume carbon is free is an assumption that is about to go splat. … You have lots of assets, many of you do, in your portfolios right now that truly do deserve that epithet “subprime.”