9 ms·

Climate capitalists have serious money in climate-friendly investments

mireya 7y ago
This is a new comment
tossAfterUsing 7y ago
If i were feeling glib, i might say something like: > File under: "duh" However, I think it's important to recognize that just because this shocking headline might be true, doesn't mean that capitalism is necessarily incompatible with conservation & environmental stewardship.
- mc32 7y ago
  I think conservation and stewardship is only very loosely coupled with economic system. No form of economics that I know has been inherently better for conservation. In all economic systems taking shortcuts is the easy way.
esotericn 7y ago
Good. Look, ultimately, beyond a certain point, this stuff is point scoring. After you have some amount - say a few hundred grand, a million - the actual number doesn't really matter - you're waving your metaphorical dick around. And that's fine. If we can convert that dick waving into serious change - if we can get the metric by which intelligent beings compete to be something good, like carbon captured or species saved or ICE cars avoided or _whatever_ - we are well on the way to winning. You built an enormous solar farm? Adonis DNA. If we hack it so that it just slots in to the Natural Way of Things - e.g. with a carbon tax or similar - such that investing and buying and doing good things is simply logical - even better.
- _edo 7y ago
  If you want all of our productivity and competition to go towards something good you have to decide what good means. Is is it the total sum of all the wants and needs of society being matched up with our resources as efficiently as possible? Or is good something chosen by a small group of people using their superior knowledge and wisdom?
  - skosch 7y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. We don't need your technocratic oligarchy. Most people already do agree on what's "good" and what isn't, and yet they (rationally) choose to put their money elsewhere, because they have no guarantee that everyone else won't freeload off of their contribution. If I invest $100 in protecting a public good (like the climate), I only get one seven-billionth of the benefit; the rest goes to all of the other people on the planet. So I'll only invest if everyone else chips in, too. The easiest solution to force cooperation like that is called ... taxation. The more difficult, but perhaps closer-to-ideal solution involves more math, see e.g. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656
    - jiriknesl 7y ago
      This is a false assumption as well. If people decide to not invest to clean energy/climate-neutrality/reducing waste, it might be fear of freeloading, but it can be billions of other reasons. But most reasons will have something in common. And it is not fear of freeloading. It is a list of priorities. When something is really important for people, they do it, they invest time and money into it. If people don't invest their time nor money, it is in fact not important for them. So why tax something that isn't important for people (because if it was important, they everybody would buy clean energy, would stop using plastic & other things)?
      - WA 7y ago
        It wasn’t important for people in medieval cities to have a working sewer. Nobody would invest in such a thing. But the benefits are obvious. It wasn’t clear to people that putting on a seatbelt saves their lives. Maybe, because there was no seatbelt in the first place. What’s important to people is sometimes a matter of marketing. What’s important to people requires that "the right stuff" is offered. People want to save the environment, but also want to save money. Only way this can work is if products get the damage they cause taxed in. Because right now, the environmentally friendly products are more expensive. It should be the other way around.
- cheez 7y ago
  Except that's not what happens. What happens is people line up at the trough of government directed funding and distort the market, often negatively for a long period of time. For example, people who are against meat consumption for climate purposes are linked through various entities to companies like BYND. So they begin to work on legislation that will profit BYND. For another example, the solar funding debacle under Obama. Otherwise I have no qualms with what you're saying.
  - optimiz3 7y ago
    > solar funding debacle Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs. What % of startups do you expect to succeed, 100%?
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      The issue (as I understand it) was not that any one company failed, but that people lied about or ignored warning signs that failure was imminent for specific companies (edit: and that this may have been done due to conflict of interests). The actual policy issues and implication are hidden behind the partisan wrangling and spin that surrounded this topic. There are legitimate concerns about conflicts on interest for people who have large investments in green companies while also lobbying strongly for particular "green" public policies. The risk is that if we uncritically accept these people at their word, we may end up with policies that do less to protect the environment and climate and more to line the pockets of the advocates. Of course, these issues are endemic to our current political/economic systems and don't just apply to investment in climate friendly companies. I would be much more inclined to trust the motivations of environment advocates with large investments in environmental companies if those investments were purchased and administered through some sort of blind trust to alleviate conflict on interest concerns.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        What about all the coal-funded coal lobbyists?
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > Look, ultimately, beyond a certain point, this stuff is point scoring. Larger amounts of capital means you can do larger things with it. Like SpaceX. If I had $zillions, I'd probably finance a probe to every object in the solar system that's moon size or larger, and landers to the ones that can be landed on.
  - arbol 7y ago
    Why would you do this before tackling the climate crisis?
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      Spreading into the solar system is a long term solution.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        Only for the select few that were allowed to leave the planet.
      - ta1234567890 7y ago
        A slightly shorter term solution: going underground. Earth is huge, we have barely scratched the surface. There is a lot of space and resources underground. And we don't have to go anywhere, we are already here.
        chr1 7y ago
        Exactly, seasteading and 'terraforming' deserts are other short term solutions, but for any of that to get more investment we need growing population in rich parts of the world, that would need this and would have money for this. But unfortunately we do not have that.
        ta1234567890 7y ago
        I think we need better marketing and just a handful of very wealthy and highly visible people to invest in those alternatives instead of going into space. In any case, what really makes space exploration possible today, is military spending. Which means that for the alternatives to become viable, they need to have strategic military applications. Unfortunately.
fnord77 7y ago
Capitalism is not going to fix climate change. This has to be a government-driven manhattan-project/moon-shot/new deal-project where no profit motive is involved at all.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  So communism will save us? Why am I not surprised this is the suggestion?
- rogerkirkness 7y ago
  I think that we should take what we can get. I'm not opposed to what you're saying working, but it's almost certainly not going to work. You have to align incentives.
- roenxi 7y ago
  We had an article just yesterday titled "Solar and Wind Power So Cheap They’re Outgrowing Subsidies" and there is no reason to believe they are going to reach parity with fossil fuels then stop improving. Why don't you think capitalism is going to fix climate change? If clean is cheaper, the capitalists will be using it. With gusto. If prices reach parity, then the whole economic system will basically go into autopilot using & improving the technology, let alone the influence all the private interest groups who want research into clean tech.
  - TOGoS 7y ago
    "There's no competitive advantage in saving the planet." Capitalists will always externalize costs if they can. Sometimes that means bribing politicians to change the rules or look the other way. It's very nice that solar panels are getting cheap, but electricity production is only one of many problems that we're facing. Like overfishing, for example. There's profit to be made by dragging that last fish out of the ocean, y'know.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      > Like overfishing, for example. There's profit to be made by dragging that last fish out of the ocean, y'know. Of course not, markets don't work without property rights. But there is money on banning high-sea fishing so you can sell more of your farmed fish (and help the environment as a side-effect), and some companies are pushing for that.
jmpman 7y ago
My neighbor is convinced that climate change isn’t real and has been pushed by the left to make activists feel important. As there’s an economic slant to this, my cynical view is that there’s a chance that climate change agenda is being pushed by AstroTurfing groups to drive government handouts to the Green industry. I’m 99.9% convinced that climate change is happening and will follow the models.... but maybe I’m being scammed.
- melling 7y ago
  That’s because he reads different media: https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions/ https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-clima...
  - jmpman 7y ago
    Ding ding ding. That’s exactly what he was quoting. So, how does one counter this?
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      With more effort than it's probably reasonable to expect, and they probably wouldn't keep listening anyway. To pick one as I happen to remember it. 500 days before climate chaos. IIRC that was some French minister, or delegate 500 and something days before the Paris 2015 climate summit. It got a fair bit of press, and was making a reasonable point. 500 days to make adequate agreement in the summit or lock in the train to chaos as the plan to reduce won't work. Not that chaos arrives on day 501. All those Arctic ice free probably miss the second half of the sentence that's "in summer", or in the coming fifty years etc. If they're going to cherry pick that disingenuously they can "prove" black is white.
- smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
  I think both are true. Climate change is happening, and it’s also being promoted to make money for various green causes.
- 7y ago
tito 7y ago
Related: Warren Buffett is investing $30B into wind farms. Not to help his conscience ;) https://www.betterworldsolutions.eu/warren-buffett-spends-big-on-clean-energy/ https://www.betterworldsolutions.eu/warren-buffett-spends-bi...
- fwr 7y ago
  Caution: spammy website, and this was back in 2014: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/warren-buffett-to-keep-betting-on-energy-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see/272471/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/warren-buffett-to-keep-bett...
m0zg 7y ago
I hope they have serious money in nuclear, because nuclear is the straightest path away from carbon-heavy energy. It works well, and it works for a very long time (like 50-60 years or more - we will have fusion by the time those power plants are decommissioned). And now we can build power plants which physically can't blow up because they are unpressurized (sodium coolant) and there's no water in the system to produce hydrogen.
- ngold 7y ago
  10 billion and 10 years a nuclear reactor, if that doesn't turn into 30 billion and 20 years before abandoning it. Which has already happened.
ThomPete 7y ago
As someone who is actively looking for things in this space to invest in and to determine whether it makes sense at all, I can only say that so far it doesn't look good. There are a bunch of problems with the fundamental analysis of the problem, but even if we all magically agreed that climate change was the biggest threat to humanity then the real problem is in the solutions. Energy is a physics not a technology problem. And the reality is that we haven't had any major scientific breakthroughs in this space since fossil fuels and nuclear. Almost all of modern society is depending on them and there is no new fundamental scientific discoveries to replace them anytime soon. I have sat in on countless plastic alternative presentations only to discover that while it might work in a lab it won't scale and it's only for a fraction of the things you can use plastic for. Plastic gives us everything from as hard as diamond to as soft as spiderweb. No other materical does that. When it comes to energy there are currently three potential solutions worth following with the ability to solve our energy needs and still be green. Fusion, thorium and fuell cells. If you want to solve fusion you have to at least try and taggle plasma which means tagging magnets or something similar. In other words you have to make discoveries in completely different fields than the field of fusion itself. Fuell cells is equally far off and we don't really have a realistic model for how to create them and apply them to ex wind and solar which will be needed to make them even remotely competitive in the bigger game otherwise the realities of their capacity factor is just not going to cut it. Thorium is the one that seams most feasible but still require a lot of progress to be anywhere close to ready. In other words I think we will be stuck with fossil fuels for a very very long time and if these climate capitalists were really serious about this they would put the money towards fundamental science instead, the will have a slightly smaller chance of succeeding but if successful their investment will dwarf whatever they can do in the startup space.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Can you clarify what do you mean by "replace"? Are you talking about full replacement for all uses of plastic/fossil fuels (so that we don't have to use them ever again), or are you saying there is no way to replace a significant part of the used plastic/fossil fuel even by selecting specific alternatives for specific uses (like packaging)?

This is a new comment

If i were feeling glib, i might say something like: > File under: "duh" However, I think it's important to recognize that just because this shocking headline might be true, doesn't mean that capitalism is necessarily incompatible with conservation & environmental stewardship.

mc32 7y ago
I think conservation and stewardship is only very loosely coupled with economic system. No form of economics that I know has been inherently better for conservation. In all economic systems taking shortcuts is the easy way.

esotericn 7y ago

Good. Look, ultimately, beyond a certain point, this stuff is point scoring. After you have some amount - say a few hundred grand, a million - the actual number doesn't really matter - you're waving your metaphorical dick around. And that's fine. If we can convert that dick waving into serious change - if we can get the metric by which intelligent beings compete to be something good, like carbon captured or species saved or ICE cars avoided or _whatever_ - we are well on the way to winning. You built an enormous solar farm? Adonis DNA. If we hack it so that it just slots in to the Natural Way of Things - e.g. with a carbon tax or similar - such that investing and buying and doing good things is simply logical - even better.

_edo 7y ago
If you want all of our productivity and competition to go towards something good you have to decide what good means. Is is it the total sum of all the wants and needs of society being matched up with our resources as efficiently as possible? Or is good something chosen by a small group of people using their superior knowledge and wisdom?
- skosch 7y ago
  That's a false dichotomy. We don't need your technocratic oligarchy. Most people already do agree on what's "good" and what isn't, and yet they (rationally) choose to put their money elsewhere, because they have no guarantee that everyone else won't freeload off of their contribution. If I invest $100 in protecting a public good (like the climate), I only get one seven-billionth of the benefit; the rest goes to all of the other people on the planet. So I'll only invest if everyone else chips in, too. The easiest solution to force cooperation like that is called ... taxation. The more difficult, but perhaps closer-to-ideal solution involves more math, see e.g. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656
  - jiriknesl 7y ago
    This is a false assumption as well. If people decide to not invest to clean energy/climate-neutrality/reducing waste, it might be fear of freeloading, but it can be billions of other reasons. But most reasons will have something in common. And it is not fear of freeloading. It is a list of priorities. When something is really important for people, they do it, they invest time and money into it. If people don't invest their time nor money, it is in fact not important for them. So why tax something that isn't important for people (because if it was important, they everybody would buy clean energy, would stop using plastic & other things)?
    - WA 7y ago
      It wasn’t important for people in medieval cities to have a working sewer. Nobody would invest in such a thing. But the benefits are obvious. It wasn’t clear to people that putting on a seatbelt saves their lives. Maybe, because there was no seatbelt in the first place. What’s important to people is sometimes a matter of marketing. What’s important to people requires that "the right stuff" is offered. People want to save the environment, but also want to save money. Only way this can work is if products get the damage they cause taxed in. Because right now, the environmentally friendly products are more expensive. It should be the other way around.
cheez 7y ago
Except that's not what happens. What happens is people line up at the trough of government directed funding and distort the market, often negatively for a long period of time. For example, people who are against meat consumption for climate purposes are linked through various entities to companies like BYND. So they begin to work on legislation that will profit BYND. For another example, the solar funding debacle under Obama. Otherwise I have no qualms with what you're saying.
- optimiz3 7y ago
  > solar funding debacle Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs. What % of startups do you expect to succeed, 100%?
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    The issue (as I understand it) was not that any one company failed, but that people lied about or ignored warning signs that failure was imminent for specific companies (edit: and that this may have been done due to conflict of interests). The actual policy issues and implication are hidden behind the partisan wrangling and spin that surrounded this topic. There are legitimate concerns about conflicts on interest for people who have large investments in green companies while also lobbying strongly for particular "green" public policies. The risk is that if we uncritically accept these people at their word, we may end up with policies that do less to protect the environment and climate and more to line the pockets of the advocates. Of course, these issues are endemic to our current political/economic systems and don't just apply to investment in climate friendly companies. I would be much more inclined to trust the motivations of environment advocates with large investments in environmental companies if those investments were purchased and administered through some sort of blind trust to alleviate conflict on interest concerns.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      What about all the coal-funded coal lobbyists?
WalterBright 7y ago
> Look, ultimately, beyond a certain point, this stuff is point scoring. Larger amounts of capital means you can do larger things with it. Like SpaceX. If I had $zillions, I'd probably finance a probe to every object in the solar system that's moon size or larger, and landers to the ones that can be landed on.
- arbol 7y ago
  Why would you do this before tackling the climate crisis?
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Spreading into the solar system is a long term solution.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      Only for the select few that were allowed to leave the planet.
    - ta1234567890 7y ago
      A slightly shorter term solution: going underground. Earth is huge, we have barely scratched the surface. There is a lot of space and resources underground. And we don't have to go anywhere, we are already here.
      - chr1 7y ago
        Exactly, seasteading and 'terraforming' deserts are other short term solutions, but for any of that to get more investment we need growing population in rich parts of the world, that would need this and would have money for this. But unfortunately we do not have that.
        ta1234567890 7y ago
        I think we need better marketing and just a handful of very wealthy and highly visible people to invest in those alternatives instead of going into space. In any case, what really makes space exploration possible today, is military spending. Which means that for the alternatives to become viable, they need to have strategic military applications. Unfortunately.

fnord77 7y ago

Capitalism is not going to fix climate change. This has to be a government-driven manhattan-project/moon-shot/new deal-project where no profit motive is involved at all.

chrisco255 7y ago
So communism will save us? Why am I not surprised this is the suggestion?
rogerkirkness 7y ago
I think that we should take what we can get. I'm not opposed to what you're saying working, but it's almost certainly not going to work. You have to align incentives.
roenxi 7y ago
We had an article just yesterday titled "Solar and Wind Power So Cheap They’re Outgrowing Subsidies" and there is no reason to believe they are going to reach parity with fossil fuels then stop improving. Why don't you think capitalism is going to fix climate change? If clean is cheaper, the capitalists will be using it. With gusto. If prices reach parity, then the whole economic system will basically go into autopilot using & improving the technology, let alone the influence all the private interest groups who want research into clean tech.
- TOGoS 7y ago
  "There's no competitive advantage in saving the planet." Capitalists will always externalize costs if they can. Sometimes that means bribing politicians to change the rules or look the other way. It's very nice that solar panels are getting cheap, but electricity production is only one of many problems that we're facing. Like overfishing, for example. There's profit to be made by dragging that last fish out of the ocean, y'know.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > Like overfishing, for example. There's profit to be made by dragging that last fish out of the ocean, y'know. Of course not, markets don't work without property rights. But there is money on banning high-sea fishing so you can sell more of your farmed fish (and help the environment as a side-effect), and some companies are pushing for that.

jmpman 7y ago

My neighbor is convinced that climate change isn’t real and has been pushed by the left to make activists feel important. As there’s an economic slant to this, my cynical view is that there’s a chance that climate change agenda is being pushed by AstroTurfing groups to drive government handouts to the Green industry. I’m 99.9% convinced that climate change is happening and will follow the models.... but maybe I’m being scammed.

melling 7y ago
That’s because he reads different media: https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions/ https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-clima...
- jmpman 7y ago
  Ding ding ding. That’s exactly what he was quoting. So, how does one counter this?
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    With more effort than it's probably reasonable to expect, and they probably wouldn't keep listening anyway. To pick one as I happen to remember it. 500 days before climate chaos. IIRC that was some French minister, or delegate 500 and something days before the Paris 2015 climate summit. It got a fair bit of press, and was making a reasonable point. 500 days to make adequate agreement in the summit or lock in the train to chaos as the plan to reduce won't work. Not that chaos arrives on day 501. All those Arctic ice free probably miss the second half of the sentence that's "in summer", or in the coming fifty years etc. If they're going to cherry pick that disingenuously they can "prove" black is white.
smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
I think both are true. Climate change is happening, and it’s also being promoted to make money for various green causes.
7y ago

tito 7y ago

Related: Warren Buffett is investing $30B into wind farms. Not to help his conscience ;) https://www.betterworldsolutions.eu/warren-buffett-spends-big-on-clean-energy/ https://www.betterworldsolutions.eu/warren-buffett-spends-bi...

fwr 7y ago
Caution: spammy website, and this was back in 2014: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/warren-buffett-to-keep-betting-on-energy-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see/272471/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/warren-buffett-to-keep-bett...

m0zg 7y ago

I hope they have serious money in nuclear, because nuclear is the straightest path away from carbon-heavy energy. It works well, and it works for a very long time (like 50-60 years or more - we will have fusion by the time those power plants are decommissioned). And now we can build power plants which physically can't blow up because they are unpressurized (sodium coolant) and there's no water in the system to produce hydrogen.

ngold 7y ago
10 billion and 10 years a nuclear reactor, if that doesn't turn into 30 billion and 20 years before abandoning it. Which has already happened.

ThomPete 7y ago

As someone who is actively looking for things in this space to invest in and to determine whether it makes sense at all, I can only say that so far it doesn't look good. There are a bunch of problems with the fundamental analysis of the problem, but even if we all magically agreed that climate change was the biggest threat to humanity then the real problem is in the solutions. Energy is a physics not a technology problem. And the reality is that we haven't had any major scientific breakthroughs in this space since fossil fuels and nuclear. Almost all of modern society is depending on them and there is no new fundamental scientific discoveries to replace them anytime soon. I have sat in on countless plastic alternative presentations only to discover that while it might work in a lab it won't scale and it's only for a fraction of the things you can use plastic for. Plastic gives us everything from as hard as diamond to as soft as spiderweb. No other materical does that. When it comes to energy there are currently three potential solutions worth following with the ability to solve our energy needs and still be green. Fusion, thorium and fuell cells. If you want to solve fusion you have to at least try and taggle plasma which means tagging magnets or something similar. In other words you have to make discoveries in completely different fields than the field of fusion itself. Fuell cells is equally far off and we don't really have a realistic model for how to create them and apply them to ex wind and solar which will be needed to make them even remotely competitive in the bigger game otherwise the realities of their capacity factor is just not going to cut it. Thorium is the one that seams most feasible but still require a lot of progress to be anywhere close to ready. In other words I think we will be stuck with fossil fuels for a very very long time and if these climate capitalists were really serious about this they would put the money towards fundamental science instead, the will have a slightly smaller chance of succeeding but if successful their investment will dwarf whatever they can do in the startup space.

icebraining 7y ago
Can you clarify what do you mean by "replace"? Are you talking about full replacement for all uses of plastic/fossil fuels (so that we don't have to use them ever again), or are you saying there is no way to replace a significant part of the used plastic/fossil fuel even by selecting specific alternatives for specific uses (like packaging)?