among the things that separate us humans
from other species
besides these handy-dandy opposable
thumbs is our ability to simultaneously
hold in our mind contradictory and
conflicting emotions and ideas we can
feel fear but also hope we can be afraid
of something but also optimistic that we
can get through it
I am afraid of climate change the
greenhouse gases we have pumped into the
atmosphere now capture an extra amount
of heat energy equivalent to the
detonation of 400,000 or Oshima sized
atomic bombs every single day there are
a number of reasons we find ourselves in
this climate predicament but today I’m
capitalism in the pursuit of profit as
much as any other factors have caused
the climate crisis over the last century
our economy has grown exponentially as
has our stock market but this remarkable
economic growth was fueled largely by
the use of cheap and abundant fossil
energy the emissions of which have
changed our climate but what if we could
take that awesome power of capitalism
and the profit motive and redirect it
away from contributing to the climate
problem and instead harness that power
to help solve it
my name is Roger ballantine and I am a
climate capitalist let me talk for a
minute about how we got to where we are
capitalism is the pursuit of profit and
wealth through the marketplace companies
make products and services and if what
they earn from selling those products
and services is more than what it costs
to produce them they make a profit and
companies can do this calculation
because all the things they need to use
and consume to make their products have
numbers associated with them that we
call prices
now in the perfect market of your
college textbooks one assumes that the
price of something more or less fully
reflects the costs associated with
producing it if however something is
priced below its actual costs too much
of it will be consumed and this is
called a market failure let me give you
an example over the last hundred years
the price of energy produced from coal
has been low and we have used a lot of
it the cost of that coal power however
was actually much greater the emissions
from burning coal have literally
consumed our atmosphere but to the
buyers of that coal power those costs
were not reflected in its price and we
use too much of it the International
Monetary Fund estimates that the total
unpriced cost of carbon emissions from
our use of fossil fuels is six trillion
dollars climate change is the greatest
market failure in the history of
capitalism now don’t get me wrong
capitalism has produced a lot of
wonderful things for our society but
protecting the planet is not one of them
our traditional response to this problem
of capitalism causing environmental harm
has been to try to restrict and
constrain the profit motive through
mandates and prescriptions and fines and
even criminal penalties we call this
now if any of you have small children
like I do you know that trying to
command and control someone can lead to
shall we say in adversarial dynamic
confronted with commands and controls
industry invested in lawyers and
lobbyists and even politicians that may
be a different talk to resist these
constraints on their profit maximization
this dynamic of command and control
regulation on the one
and the hard-headed resistance of many
an industry on the other hand has played
itself out in the halls of Congress and
state houses and courtrooms across the
country and it has led far too many to
assume that if something’s good for the
environment well it must be bad for
business and vice-versa
now there will always be bad actors we
will always need some tough
environmental laws to deter the worst
kind of behavior and yes we continue to
have a market failure in that we don’t
fully price carbon emissions which is
why I support a carbon tax but as
important as they are we need to think
beyond these traditional policy
responses to the problem which are
largely focused on deterring the
corporate behavior we don’t want and
instead we need to think more about how
to encourage the corporate behavior we
do want we need to think about how to
align the power of competition and
innovation and profit seeking and even
greed with addressing the climate
problem instead of investing in lawyers
and lobbyists to resist change we want
companies to invest in smart executives
and engineers whose job it is to
innovate for better environmental
performance what I do for a living is
help companies out-compete their peers
and make more money
by reducing their carbon impact and
bringing carbon solutions to the
marketplace if I’m successful my clients
make more money and the world’s a better
place this is what climate capitalism is
all about taking what capitalism does
best
pursuing profit and aligning that with
mitigating climate change let me talk
about why I think this is realistic the
fact is that today there’s more money to
be made and addressing the climate
problem than there is in continuing to
make it worse next year the market for
renewable energy will be 800 billion
dollars
the World Bank estimates that between
now and 2030 there will be 23 trillion
dollars in profitable climate-friendly
investment opportunities in the
developing world alone and we’re
beginning to see this climate solutions
marketplace become a reality today twice
as many Americans work in the wind
industry as in coal mining the global
clean energy industry today is worth
about 1.5 trillion dollars which is
roughly twice the size of the global
airline industry and last year around
the world we installed twice as much
renewable energy as fossil energy in
fact we installed more solar power alone
than all fossil energy I could go on and
on the fact is that we are just
beginning to scratch the surface of the
money-making potential in addressing
climate change the other reason that I
think capitalism is realigning towards
addressing the climate problem has to do
with the way the market values companies
and sets stock prices a company’s stock
price is not just about how good it is
it cutting its costs and increasing its
sales and making a profit test lows
among the highest priced stocks in the
marketplace it has never made a profit a
number of factors go into setting stock
prices and corporate value for example
the market wants to see that companies
have smart leaders with vision in the
case of Elon Musk Wall Street clearly
sees him as a visionary leader who sees
trends and opportunities before others
climate change is a major trend and a
major opportunity and Tesla is seen as
bringing products to market squarely
aimed at that climate opportunity
corporate leaders who have a strategy
for climate change will be seen as
smarter and more visionary than those
another thing the market looks for in a
company is its whether it is
anticipating and has a strategy for
mitigating risk climate change itself
and future policies aimed at addressing
it are very real risks to
for assets and markets companies that
are reducing their reliance on fossil
fuels and innovating to compete in a
carbon-constrained world will be less at
risk than companies that are not doing
those things the market also understands
the importance of strong human capital
the ability to attract and retain
talented employees is a critical factor
in corporate success and companies will
increasingly find that the best and
brightest MBAs engineers and other
employees want to work for companies
that are on the right side of the
climate challenge bottom line is that
stock prices profits other critical
indicators of corporate value will be
higher for companies that are taking
climate change seriously so I am
optimistic I’m optimistic because
corporations are good at pursuing
profits and there are profits to be had
in solving the climate problem I’m
optimistic because companies that are
mitigating climate risk and seizing
climate opportunity will be more
valuable than companies that are not and
I’m optimistic because of all of us what
we choose to buy where we choose to work
how we choose to invest our 401ks and
how we choose to share our choices and
values with others will have a real
impact on corporate behavior and I am
optimistic I can’t believe I’m saying
Wow wait now I am NOT for participation
trophies I do not do snap face or insta
book but I do know that half the world’s
population is under the age of 30 last
year the World Economic Forum surveyed
30,000 Millennials from around the world
and asked them about their greatest
concerns number one by a significant
margin was climate change and these are
the customers the consumers the
employees the executives the investors
the 21st century companies will have to
attract the Millennials god help us all
will inherit the earth let me end by
invoking a fictional avatar of corporate
greed Gordon Gekko Gordon Gekko was the
ruthless financier in Oliver Stone’s
1987 movie Wall Street Wall Street was a
polemic takedown of the worst excesses
of capitalism in the movies most iconic
scene Gekko played by Michael Douglas
gives a speech to a roomful of his
investors in which he says greed is
right greed works greed cuts through
clarifies and captures the essence of
the evolutionary spirit the point is
ladies and gentlemen that greed for lack
but let me amend that slightly the point
is ladies and gentlemen that green greed
for lack of a better word is good thank
you very much
[Applause] [Music]
from other species
besides these handy-dandy opposable
thumbs is our ability to simultaneously
hold in our mind contradictory and
conflicting emotions and ideas we can
feel fear but also hope we can be afraid
of something but also optimistic that we
can get through it
I am afraid of climate change the
greenhouse gases we have pumped into the
atmosphere now capture an extra amount
of heat energy equivalent to the
detonation of 400,000 or Oshima sized
atomic bombs every single day there are
a number of reasons we find ourselves in
this climate predicament but today I’m
capitalism in the pursuit of profit as
much as any other factors have caused
the climate crisis over the last century
our economy has grown exponentially as
has our stock market but this remarkable
economic growth was fueled largely by
the use of cheap and abundant fossil
energy the emissions of which have
changed our climate but what if we could
take that awesome power of capitalism
and the profit motive and redirect it
away from contributing to the climate
problem and instead harness that power
to help solve it
my name is Roger ballantine and I am a
climate capitalist let me talk for a
minute about how we got to where we are
capitalism is the pursuit of profit and
wealth through the marketplace companies
make products and services and if what
they earn from selling those products
and services is more than what it costs
to produce them they make a profit and
companies can do this calculation
because all the things they need to use
and consume to make their products have
numbers associated with them that we
call prices
now in the perfect market of your
college textbooks one assumes that the
price of something more or less fully
reflects the costs associated with
producing it if however something is
priced below its actual costs too much
of it will be consumed and this is
called a market failure let me give you
an example over the last hundred years
the price of energy produced from coal
has been low and we have used a lot of
it the cost of that coal power however
was actually much greater the emissions
from burning coal have literally
consumed our atmosphere but to the
buyers of that coal power those costs
were not reflected in its price and we
use too much of it the International
Monetary Fund estimates that the total
unpriced cost of carbon emissions from
our use of fossil fuels is six trillion
dollars climate change is the greatest
market failure in the history of
capitalism now don’t get me wrong
capitalism has produced a lot of
wonderful things for our society but
protecting the planet is not one of them
our traditional response to this problem
of capitalism causing environmental harm
has been to try to restrict and
constrain the profit motive through
mandates and prescriptions and fines and
even criminal penalties we call this
now if any of you have small children
like I do you know that trying to
command and control someone can lead to
shall we say in adversarial dynamic
confronted with commands and controls
industry invested in lawyers and
lobbyists and even politicians that may
be a different talk to resist these
constraints on their profit maximization
this dynamic of command and control
regulation on the one
and the hard-headed resistance of many
an industry on the other hand has played
itself out in the halls of Congress and
state houses and courtrooms across the
country and it has led far too many to
assume that if something’s good for the
environment well it must be bad for
business and vice-versa
now there will always be bad actors we
will always need some tough
environmental laws to deter the worst
kind of behavior and yes we continue to
have a market failure in that we don’t
fully price carbon emissions which is
why I support a carbon tax but as
important as they are we need to think
beyond these traditional policy
responses to the problem which are
largely focused on deterring the
corporate behavior we don’t want and
instead we need to think more about how
to encourage the corporate behavior we
do want we need to think about how to
align the power of competition and
innovation and profit seeking and even
greed with addressing the climate
problem instead of investing in lawyers
and lobbyists to resist change we want
companies to invest in smart executives
and engineers whose job it is to
innovate for better environmental
performance what I do for a living is
help companies out-compete their peers
and make more money
by reducing their carbon impact and
bringing carbon solutions to the
marketplace if I’m successful my clients
make more money and the world’s a better
place this is what climate capitalism is
all about taking what capitalism does
best
pursuing profit and aligning that with
mitigating climate change let me talk
about why I think this is realistic the
fact is that today there’s more money to
be made and addressing the climate
problem than there is in continuing to
make it worse next year the market for
renewable energy will be 800 billion
dollars
the World Bank estimates that between
now and 2030 there will be 23 trillion
dollars in profitable climate-friendly
investment opportunities in the
developing world alone and we’re
beginning to see this climate solutions
marketplace become a reality today twice
as many Americans work in the wind
industry as in coal mining the global
clean energy industry today is worth
about 1.5 trillion dollars which is
roughly twice the size of the global
airline industry and last year around
the world we installed twice as much
renewable energy as fossil energy in
fact we installed more solar power alone
than all fossil energy I could go on and
on the fact is that we are just
beginning to scratch the surface of the
money-making potential in addressing
climate change the other reason that I
think capitalism is realigning towards
addressing the climate problem has to do
with the way the market values companies
and sets stock prices a company’s stock
price is not just about how good it is
it cutting its costs and increasing its
sales and making a profit test lows
among the highest priced stocks in the
marketplace it has never made a profit a
number of factors go into setting stock
prices and corporate value for example
the market wants to see that companies
have smart leaders with vision in the
case of Elon Musk Wall Street clearly
sees him as a visionary leader who sees
trends and opportunities before others
climate change is a major trend and a
major opportunity and Tesla is seen as
bringing products to market squarely
aimed at that climate opportunity
corporate leaders who have a strategy
for climate change will be seen as
smarter and more visionary than those
another thing the market looks for in a
company is its whether it is
anticipating and has a strategy for
mitigating risk climate change itself
and future policies aimed at addressing
it are very real risks to
for assets and markets companies that
are reducing their reliance on fossil
fuels and innovating to compete in a
carbon-constrained world will be less at
risk than companies that are not doing
those things the market also understands
the importance of strong human capital
the ability to attract and retain
talented employees is a critical factor
in corporate success and companies will
increasingly find that the best and
brightest MBAs engineers and other
employees want to work for companies
that are on the right side of the
climate challenge bottom line is that
stock prices profits other critical
indicators of corporate value will be
higher for companies that are taking
climate change seriously so I am
optimistic I’m optimistic because
corporations are good at pursuing
profits and there are profits to be had
in solving the climate problem I’m
optimistic because companies that are
mitigating climate risk and seizing
climate opportunity will be more
valuable than companies that are not and
I’m optimistic because of all of us what
we choose to buy where we choose to work
how we choose to invest our 401ks and
how we choose to share our choices and
values with others will have a real
impact on corporate behavior and I am
optimistic I can’t believe I’m saying
Wow wait now I am NOT for participation
trophies I do not do snap face or insta
book but I do know that half the world’s
population is under the age of 30 last
year the World Economic Forum surveyed
30,000 Millennials from around the world
and asked them about their greatest
concerns number one by a significant
margin was climate change and these are
the customers the consumers the
employees the executives the investors
the 21st century companies will have to
attract the Millennials god help us all
will inherit the earth let me end by
invoking a fictional avatar of corporate
greed Gordon Gekko Gordon Gekko was the
ruthless financier in Oliver Stone’s
1987 movie Wall Street Wall Street was a
polemic takedown of the worst excesses
of capitalism in the movies most iconic
scene Gekko played by Michael Douglas
gives a speech to a roomful of his
investors in which he says greed is
right greed works greed cuts through
clarifies and captures the essence of
the evolutionary spirit the point is
ladies and gentlemen that greed for lack
but let me amend that slightly the point
is ladies and gentlemen that green greed
for lack of a better word is good thank
you very much
[Applause] [Music]
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