Climate Change Efforts Must Be Practical and the Time is NOW

How do we develop climate-oriented investments that are both going to move the needle in a significant way and also generate a significant enough return for investors?

Yes, well think about it. It's your pension fund, and now because it's your pension fund and you want to make sure you get paid, you want that pension fund to put money into investments that are going to make money.

Now, there's a double bottom line there, we call it; in other words, the do-good part of it and then also the fact that it creates a return. It's going to have to come from that double bottom line.

For example, Bill Gates has a climate fund, which is called Breakthrough Energy, and it produces a return from finding the new inventions. It may be solar, it may be other forms of invention.

But also, we must recognize that that will not happen at a pace that is needed. Therefore, we have to deal with adaptation. In other words, we're not likely to hit that 1 and 2-degree limit, and as a result, there are going to be consequences of that.

Then that gets down to a nitty-gritty level of what does that mean. It means, um, okay, preparation for sea levels rising, for temperature changes, and then that's going to change the world in ways where countries—much more than almost 80% of the world's population—are not living in places that will get those funds.

So it's going to have consequences like migration and so on. The main thing I'm saying is that it has to be dealt with practically, calculating where you're going to get the money from those who can make it.

And that has to be productivity, the great inventiveness of entrepreneurs and so on. Then, it also has to be the realistic look at how adaptation to what's coming is going to be handled.