This is not some rainbow coalition. This is not even Al Gore. [Jeremy] Grantham is the chairman of Boston-based fund management company Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo. He is British-born but has lived here since the early 1960s.

Grantham is, like most fund managers, prudent, conservative and inclined to favor the free market and smaller government. He has even said he supported Bush-Cheney in 2000. That doesn’t make him particularly political. He also manages a portion of the Heinz-Kerry fortune, as well as those of many other wealthy types.

But he’s certainly a man Cheney respects highly. According to the vice president’s last personal financial disclosure form, filed with the Federal Election Commission, Cheney has somewhere between $1.6 million and $6 million of his family’s money invested in four of Grantham’s funds. These aren’t even index funds. These are discretionary funds, where you trust the manager to look at the landscape, analyze all the data, and make the best investments. Cheney must have a lot of faith in Grantham’s judgement and analytical skills.

And what does Grantham believe? That America’s carbon-based energy policy is nuts. He just sent out an email to clients called  "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data." Maybe the veep will read it.