It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Green

Update: It appears many concert venues aren't doing very well at the gate.

Next thing you know, Al Gore will claim to have invented snake oil, along with the Internet. Apparently he and a partner are merging the two.

Tim Blair takes on Live Earth - take a look Tim is always worth the read h/t Instapundit Also at the risk of taking all the bubbles out of the no carbon-nation ... take a look at this below, as well. Kevin Wall, Al Gore's new-found partner producer of Live Earth previously founded Network Live to make money, not save the poor. It did neither.

It failed as a business and as an effort to fight poverty. Next he saw Al Gore's film and, lo and behold, Control Room was born. It's partners? MSN, DirectTV, Qualcom, etc.... It don't mean a thing, if it don't bring the green - and I don't mean as regards the environment. Same opportunist, different snake oil. zzzzzzzzzzz

As Tim addresses, the people in and behind this will be flying and riding in limos - fine. But at least be honest about it. This is business for them, not politics. I wonder how much of AlGore's hedge fund cash got into the mix? Or maybe it's too risky, as compared to the carbon offset business. Oh wait, this helps make Gore's off-shore enterprise even more viable. Now there's a business model.

Kevin's extensive experience in music promotion and production, live television, the Internet, and venture capital investments ... He is a co-founder of Shelter Capital Partners, a $175 million VC fund, currently invested in 12 companies in the semiconductor, software and convergence sectors.

The Sudden Demise of Network Live
Sunday October 1, 2006 3:02PM

One of my very favorite companies folded this past week Network Live. Network Live was started by Kevin Wall, who had been executive producer of both Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005 with Bob Geldof. Network Live was a phenomenal concept where a ‘live’ concert would be re-distributed across multiple platforms in real time (or delayed); and with heavyweight partners like AOL, XM Radio, AEG, Cingular, and DirecTV it seemed destined for success. As someone who’s passionate about models around “Concerts of the Future”, I was confident this was well-positioned. However, all good things must come to an end. It seems that the company may not have pulled in sufficient revenues quickly enough to satisfy its investors; and as its initial one-year contracts with the partners referenced above came to an end, they began to pull out. Another challenge was surely the knotty issues of dealing with A-list artists, their labels, publishers, management, and everyone in their respective entourages who would have needed to fully cooperate.

That said, I believe in this model overall — and I remain confident that real-time, multi-platform deployment is a notion whose time has come. Sadly, this initial experiment has ended — but it has morphed into a venture called Control Room which will attempt to do something very related in partnership this time with MSN at the outset. The launch of Control Room is tomorrow, October 2nd. Stay tuned…….it’s sure to be worth checking out (I’m a big believer in Kevin Wall).

Wall spotted a cause below alright - one he is now leveraging to promote the very types of businesses his VC firm is tied into.

via Tim Blair: The seed was planted less than two years ago at the Beverly Hills Hotel in California, when Wall, a veteran concert producer, attended a slide show about global warming presented by Gore, as featured in the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth

'Over the course of the 90 minutes my wife and I were very emotionally moved by the climate crisis,' said Wall, 54, a father of three. 'We understood for the first time it was about us, our children and our children's children. This is not just a movie - it's happening.'

Wall met the former US vice-president and discussed taking the message to as many people as possible: 'After Live8 I said never again, but I got the call from Al Gore, the global rock star on this issue. What I can do on the day is deliver 2 billion pairs of eyeballs.

Comments

[Oldsmoblogger]

Control Room, hey?

Unintended irony lives.

[John F.]

Here's a link to famed venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkings emoting about global warming at a TED symposium. For those of us who like venture capitalists, this is plain embarrassing, and it's another example of emotional blackmail in the service of the financial interests of the self-appointed guardians of the planet.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/128

[John F.]

Here's a link to famed venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkings emoting about global warming at a TED symposium. For those of us who like venture capitalists, this is plain embarrassing, and it's another example of emotional blackmail in the service of the financial interests of the self-appointed guardians of the planet.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/128

[anon]

Kleiner Perkins (not "perkings") has a number of cleantech investments, indeed former GP Vinod Khosla has his own cleantech fund now. This isn't hypocrisy from KPCB, it's business and when you look at their energy portfolio you see power storage technology, solar, and biofuels... not exactly anything other than solid mainstream technologies.

Shelter, on the other hand, is a 4th tier venture fund in SoCal. Nothing to get too worked up about. Their most significant deal is Veoh, but only because it was founded by Michael Eisner... Veoh is going to get crushed by Joost.

[Tagore Smith]

"you see power storage technology, solar, and biofuels... not exactly anything other than solid mainstream technologies."

With the possible exception of power storage those aren't mainstream technologies (though they may be mainstream investments if you click your heels three times and incant 'There's no place like Austin...') Oil, coal, and natural gas are what fuel things in the physical world, nuclear making up all the balance that is noticeable.

But that world isn't an Ayn Rand novel. KP's job is to make money. If the bastards want tulips, tulips it is. As long as they're careful to pull out just before the critical moment, everything should be fine.

[Jeff]

Tagore,
Have you looked at their portfolio (what they have made public)?

GreatPoint Energy: "Commercializing a proprietary catalytic process for converting coal (and other carbon-based feedstocks) into clean-burning, pipeline quality natural gas."

Miasole: thin film solar, which is a mainstream energy technology (35+ years would be my guess). Current efficiency rates are what, 15%? I'm surprised more companies aren't focused on this. Look at how many products are showing up with solar panels attached to them... everything from roadside emergency phones to portable chargers.

Altra Biofuels: ethanol (not like that hasn't been around for a few decades) and biodiesel (okay, this is pretty trendy). There's also a cellulose ethanol deal, but that's Khosla's company and almost a "gimme" investment for them.

And then there's a couple of fuel cell deals and that's definitely cutting edge stuff many years from commercialization. Also on the list is a company that focuses not on energy but on creating better molecules for synthetic chemicals and fuels, again a basic science deal that is cutting edge.

[dessy]

The global warming is fact, but many people still don't understand how important and how seriously is everything.Some people even don't believe that this is the truth and make some funny theories of themselfs.But if they look around they will see the signs.
I'm living in Bulgaria and for the past 2 years there are floods, heats, forest fires and storms and thats not common here.Our climate is getting too extreme.There's no rains, some villages don't have water.And even now nobody is doing nothing.We don't have snow anymore.The winter is too warm.The truth is that I don't want to live in a world like this.It's not right.The humankind do everything that he wants and don't even think about what disasters are happening becouse of his actions.The nature is suffering, the animals are dying, the forests are gone and if that is not enough touchy many people are dying of hunger and sickness.
I'm so mad that I can do nothing so important to change this things, but I want it so much.I'm deeply sorry if my english was bad but I was trying with all my forces.Bye