Al Gore, the world's first carbon billionaire?

Al Gore's latest eco-treatise, Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis, is set to hit stores Tuesday. The former vice-president says he will donate 100 percent of the proceeds from the book to the the Alliance for Climate Protection, a green group.

But it turns out that the book money is small potatoes compared to what Gore could earn from his various eco-friendly investments. As a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital heavyweight Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Gore is poised to reap hundreds of millions from investments in the companies that will benefit from the government's increased emphasis on green technology. According to The New York Times's John Broder, Gore could become the world's first "carbon billionaire."