John Doerr Pleads for a Greener Future
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07. 5.07
When John Doerr talks, people listen. As one of Silicon Valley's most prolific venture capitalists, having earned upwards of $1 billion betting on tech heavyweights like Amazon, Compaq and Google, investors and businessmen paid close attention when he recently began evangelizing against the threat of global warming and embraced clean technology, citing it as the "biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century,"
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the firm in which he is a partner, has already invested $200 million in a group of startups working on new sources of alternative energy, waste remediation and other technologies to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions. Though we missed covering it the first time around, we wanted to bring to your attention a video of his recent appearance at TED, in which he made a moving, impassioned plea for change.
Balancing hints of hope with strong words of caution, Doerr explained how he and his colleagues had spent a year surveying a microcosm of the current state of clean technology. He commended the progress of Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer, in implementing some simple yet effective green policies at its stores and praised California for leading the way with its momentous AB 32 (i.e. global warming) bill.
He also spent some time discussing the state of the ethanol industry in Brazil, marveling at its wide-scale adoption, and talked up the potential of synthetic biology in revolutionizing the biofuels industry.
The theme he kept returning to, however, was his fear that this was all too little, too late. "I don't think we're going to make it," he repeated several times, citing his concerns for the future well-being of his 15-year old daughter and her generation as the primary motivation for his renewed sense of purpose.
We certainly share in his concerns, though we'd like to think that we're more optimistic about the long-term health of our planet and our ability to tackle global warming. Having said that, it can only help to have more people like John Doerr, the prime power-broker, on our side leading the fight for change.
Via ::TED Talks: John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech (website), ::The Motley Fool: The Biggest Economic Opportunity of This Century (news website)
See also: ::Clean Energy: Wall Street's New Love Affair, ::Green Tech Will Spawn the Next Google Says Sun's Co-Founder, ::Meet The Greens: TED's Animated Enviro Education (TreeHugger)
I greatly respect Mr. Doerr for speaking out, and it’s good to see someone with experience in business giving input from their unique perspective. Treehuggers are so often dismissed as dreamy basketweaving majors!
I think his tone isn’t INappropriate, but I think there is reason to hope, because the political forces arrayed against change-for-the-better are forces of REACTION. Why is this important? Because reactionary forces have no independent energy of their own. They derive all their energy from their constituency’s dislike of environmentalism, and the Democrat liberalism traditionally associated with it. A reactionary movement literally defines itself in terms of what it dislikes.
Mr. Doerr will certainly appreciate the concept of “control premium”, which is the value derived from owning the largest voting stake on a board. I humbly submit that environmentalists and scientists and modern economists will always have the control premium in the debates over how society moves forward, because they are creative, they are able to make their own energy from nothingness, and they don’t look to the other side of the debate for a template to define themselves.
Oh, for a second, I thought TreeHugger meant John Deere, the manufacturer of outdoor cleaning equipment.
I wonder, does John Deere make green products?
Everyone should see this! It really hits it right on the money. It's things like this that made me leave my career as a computer engineer to focus 100% on helping the world to go green as quickly as possible. We cannot stress the importance of this enough.
what's with the BMW ad at the end? Dreamy shots of landscapes and thrilling music until a beemer ejaculates from a water fall - stupid and sad comment why John Doerr is afraid.