Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [5]
Let’s find out.
I.
The Dream of a More Perfect Power
chapter 1
Profit, Salvation
EVERY YEAR, THE WORLD’S TECHNO-ELITE gather at the TED Conference in California to talk about the future of everything. The event’s speakers tend to focus on technologies and ideas that are, as they put it, “worth spreading.” They aim to influence. The audience is wealthy and smart, so a good idea presented well can catapult to a very powerful kind of niche fame. So, when famed venture capitalist John Doerr stepped onto the stage in 2007 and cried about global warming, it signaled that something very strange was about to happen to environmentalism in America. “I’m really scared,” he began, waving an index card. “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
Over the next seventeen minutes, Doerr revealed his own come-to-Jesus moment and heralded the arrival of a potent new pro-technology force in environmentalism. He recounted a dinner he held for a large group, at which the discussion turned to climate change. One by one, the party attendees gave lip service to the problem. Then, it was his daughter’s turn. “Dad, your generation created this problem,” he described the teenager saying. “You better fix it.” And just like that, Doerr says, “everything changed.”
He and his partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made rich and famous from early investments in Google and Amazon, fanned out across the globe looking for solutions to “fix” global warming. “We may have the political will to do this in the US, but I gotta tell you, we have only one atmosphere, so somehow we’re going to have to find the political will to do this all around the world,” Doerr said. “We’ve got to make this economic so that all people and all nations make the right outcome the profitable outcome and therefore the likely outcome.”
The machinery that environmentalists had used to secure clean air and water—policies, limits, and laws—would be necessary but not sufficient. Doerr’s solution for climate change would require innovation and infrastructure building on a massive scale; stopping power plants from being built would not be enough. New ones—clean ones—would have to be built.
That such a rollout could occur seems possible, even plausible, to Doerr. He and many of those in the crowd had used personal computer and networking technologies to reshape the world. “I can’t wait to see what we TEDsters do about this crisis,” he said, “and I really, really hope that we multiply all of our energy, all of our talent, and all of our influence to solve this problem.” Choking up, he retreated to a chair, the lone prop on the stage. “Because if we do,” he paused, verklempt again, then concluded, “I can look forward to the conversation I’m going to have with my daughter in twenty years.”
The powerful talk ended as abruptly as it began. On his way off the stage, a man approached and bear hugged him. The clapping, which had begun slowly, grew louder as the crowd realized the presentation was over. People began to stand. Seemingly oblivious to the reception, Doerr walked off the stage into the arms of a woman whom he gave a fierce hug, his face contorting with obvious emotion as the audience settled into the resonant frequency of a standing ovation.1
It was, in the words of fellow venture capitalist and pundit Paul Kedrosky, “one of the strangest moments . . . at an admittedly often strange conference.”2 Either Doerr was a remarkably good actor—certainly a plausible scenario—or he was genuinely, deeply worried