Planet earth’s noble knight never seems to tire of surpassing himself in brazen displays of sanctimoniousness, but it feels like every time he opens his mouth he’s simply offering everyone another opportunity to take him still less seriously. Via The Hill:

“There’s no such thing as ethical oil. There’s only dirty oil and dirtier oil,” Gore told Canada’s The Globe and Mail during a Tuesday event in Toronto.

Gore was responding to Globe and Mail Editor in Chief John Stackhouse on whether it made a difference that oil sands from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would come from a democratic nation. …

On that note, Gore said thought the United States needed to change its ways to reduce the demand for Canada’s oil sands, according to The Globe and Mail.

Still, Gore put some of the blame on Canada.

“I had hoped that Canada would point the way toward a better path, but as yet, it has not,” he said.

Yes, how dare Canada make sound business decisions and develop their own natural resources for free-market consumption, because there are negative neighborhood effects involved here, dammit! No business decision, no matter how profitable and mutually beneficial between the producer and consumer, should ever, ever, ever be entered in to if it means the climate could possibly be impacted in any way. This is about principle and the greater good, for pity’s sake, and goodness knows green-loving Gore always leads by example in putting aside economic considerations and taking the moral highroad on behalf of the planet. …Heh. I jest, of course.

 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. …

That’s a pretty good January for a guy who couldn’t yet call himself a multimillionaire when he briefly slipped from public life after his bitterly contested presidential election loss to George W. Bush in late 2000, based on 1999 and 2000 disclosure forms. …

The transaction also raised eyebrows because Gore, who has for years inveighed against fossil fuels and their role in climate change, sold the network to a company funded in part by oil-rich Qatar. Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show television program, asked in January, “Can mogul Al Gore coexist with activist Al Gore?”

And, feeling as I do about ethanol subsides, you know I’m not likely to let go this gem of an uncharacteristically honest display of very non-green self interest. Direct quote:

 It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for [U.S.] first-generation ethanol. … First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. It’s hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going. … One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.

Facepalm. It’s not that climate change isn’t an issue we should be considering, but with his many anti-oil and anti-Keystone pipeline tirades, Gore isn’t really pointing to any viable alternatives as much as he is insisting that we all take a voluntary vow of poverty and slap a self-imposed damper on our economic growth. It would be a lot more convincing if A) his and the eco-radical movement’s decades of catastrophic claims weren’t all falling spectacularly short and those aforementioned climate-change neighborhood effects were even remotely as severe as they’ve been hysterically demanding, and B) he didn’t stand to continue profiting tremendously off of that very same messaging. He’s super cereal, you guys.