John Doerr - Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

Im scared, and Im angry.

In 2006, I hosted a dinner after a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, former vice president Al Gores seminal documentary on the climate crisis. We went around the table for everyones reaction to the films urgent message. When it came to my fifteen-year-old daughter, Mary, she declared with her typical candor: Im scared, and Im angry. Then she added, Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it.

The conversation stopped cold. All eyes turned to me. I didnt know what to say.

As a venture capitalist, my job is to find big opportunities, target big challenges, and invest in big solutions. I was best known for backing companies like Google and Amazon early on. But the environmental crisis dwarfed any challenge Id ever seen. Eugene Kleiner, the late cofounder of Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley firm Ive been with for forty years, left behind a set of twelve laws that have stood the test of time. The first goes as follows: No matter how groundbreaking a new technology may seem, make sure customers actually want it. But this problem led me to invoke a lesser-known Kleiner law: There is a time when panic is the appropriate response.

That time had come. We could no longer afford to underestimate our climate emergency. To avert irreversible, catastrophic consequences, we needed to act urgently and decisively. For me, that evening changed everything.

My partners and I made climate a top priority. We got serious about investing in clean and sustainable technologiesor cleantech, as theyre known in Silicon Valley. We even brought in Al Gore as the firms newest partner. But despite Als excellent company, my journey into the world of zero-emissions investing was pretty lonely at first. After the iPhone debuted in 2007, Steve Jobs invited us to launch our iFund for mobile apps from Apples headquarters. We were hearing great pitches from mobile app startups; I could see opportunities left and right.

So why commit a chunk of capital to the uncharted territory of solar panels, electric car batteries, and meatless proteins? Because it seemed like the right thing to do, for the firm and for the planet. I thought the cleantech market was a monster in the making. I believed we could do well by doing good.

We pursued mobile apps and climate ventures at the same time, despite doubters on both fronts. Our mobile app investments gave us a burst of quick wins. Our climate investments were slower out of the gate, and many of them failed. Its hard to build a durable company under any circumstances, and doubly hard to build one to take on the climate crisis.

Kleiner Perkins got beaten up in the press. But with patience and persistence, we stood by our founders. By 2019, our surviving cleantech investments began to hit one home run after the next. Our $1 billion in green venture investments is now worth $3 billion.

But we have no time for a victory lap. As the years roll by, the climate clock keeps ticking. Atmospheric carbon already exceeds the upper limit for climate stability. At our current pace, we will blow past 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over the Earths preindustrial mean temperaturesthe threshold, scientists say, for severe planetary damage. The effects of runaway global warming are already plain to see: devastating hurricanes, biblical flooding, uncontrollable wildfires, killer heat waves, and extreme droughts.