Wind mills standing 90 percent as high as the Eiffel Tower, dramatic declines in the cost of solar energy and other green energy developments are advancing at a pace that has lifted the hopes of GMO founder and climate change activist Jeremy Grantham.
Grantham, who will be speaking at FolioFn’s SRI Investing conference in Colorado Springs on November 1, isn’t sugar-coating the problem he has called ‘the race of our lives.” But he expressed surprise at the speed with which green technology is progressing.
The notion of a pristine world is long gone. “We’re already too late to stop a lot of the damage,” he said. “The harder we try the more species we can save.”
Since it was formed in 2000, the assets of the Grantham Foundation For The Protection Of The Environment reportedly have grown to about $900 million. The legendary money manager remains deeply concerned about the fate of the planet.
“If we behave very badly, our very existence may be in jeopardy,” he said.
He compares our current predicament to a man being chased by a lion in the jungle. Fortunately, there is a tree fairly nearby. “If you do your best and run like mad, you will get to the tree before the lion” gets to you,” he explains.
People who don’t believe are either “in denial or stupid.”
In 2010, a one-kilowatt battery from Tesla cost $1,000. Today, it’s about $160. Grantham concedes that five years ago he underestimated the rate of progress by two and a half years. Moreover, the batteries are turning out to last much longer than initially anticipated.
“No one realized how fast the cost of solar power” would fall, he explains. In 25 years, there will be a “surplus of green energy.”
Today, clean coal technology is a perfect example of the fantasies discussed among “climate denialists.” In his view, it’s “incredibly dirty” and “causes massive health and pollution problems.” The cost of cleaning it up is staggering.
But Grantham acknowledges that technology could eventually rectify that. “If we have some brilliant technology” that comes along in 20 or 30 years, everything could change, he says. “You can’t discount the rabbits [that] science can pull out of the hat.”