Vice President Al Gore said this week that he will not divest himself of stock in Occidental Petroleum, despite the company’s controversial plans to drill for oil in the Colombian Amazon on ancestral land of the U’wa indigenous tribe. The U’wa fear the drilling will devastate land that they consider sacred, and last month hundreds of tribe members staged a protest that ended in a skirmish with riot police and left at least one tribe member dead. Enviros have been pressing Gore to intervene on behalf of the U’wa and disassociate himself from the oil company. Gore has close ties to Occidental: His father served on the company’s board, the company is a big contributor to the Democratic Party, and the Gore family owns as much as $500,000 in Occidental stock.
