--witness What I'm going to do
is make a brief introduction,
introduce people very briefly,
because you'll have the biogs,
and try and save as much
time for us to
talk with each other.
Just as it's irrational to
deny the existence of the
climate change problem,
so it is to despair.
It's going to be perfectly
possible, and I hope you'll
see it in this morning's
session, to be really quite
optimistic about our ability
to solve a problem of scale
like climate change.
Of course, there are other
matters that you've seen in
the short presentation that kind
of reach around the edge
of the climate change issue.
And we are, in a way, strangely
fortunate to have
had the energy problem converge
with the climate
change problem so that
we do have scale.
And scale is very important
for investment.
I hope you'll also understand
that we are just beginning to
get a better alignment between
the public policy incentives,
to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, and incentives to
create wealth.
And the common market is the
first true example of a market
entirely policy driven where
it's possible to be rewarded
for delivering the value, in
every sense of the word, of
reducing greenhouse
gas emissions.
And that's a promising start.
But it's only that.
We're also seeing much more
capital flow into
environmental technology as a
space, as an investment space,
as a new asset class.
And we are seeing greater
awareness in the big
institutional investors that
this could be a way, as they
gradually allocate more of their
assets to alternative
asset classes, to make
substantial returns from
investing in these markets so
that we no longer see a trade
off between environmental value
and economic value.
And it seems to me that there
are several elements that we
could bring out in our
discussion today that look
very promising.
Firstly, we have consistently
undervalued the environment.
We have treated it as if it
were a free resource.
And our language
reflects that.
We tend to talk about the
environment as if it's a soft
issue and that economic
issues are hard.
Well, hydrology is not soft.
Atmospheric chemistry
is not soft.
It's hard as diamonds.
Rates of return are soft.
Annual reports are soft.
Management accounts
can be soft.
That's soft.
But whether you have access
to clean water is not.
Whether you have depleted
soil is not.
Whether you have polluted
air is not.
So we've got that
balance wrong.
Conceptually we are ill-advised
in the way we
approach the resolution of these
problems. And we see
them still, too much-- and I use
the language myself-- as
problems or simply better
ways to live.
But we aren't going to solve
the problem if it is all
dependent on us being perfectly
good citizens and
feeling guilty every time you
make a consumption choice.
We have to have aspirations
which are alluring.
We have to create products
people want.
We have to have people feel
that it's going to be
brilliant to be part of a growth
industry in the sorts
of technologies you are
going to hear about.
And in order for that to happen,
we're going to have to
have very large amounts
of capital flow
in a different direction.
And in order for that to happen,
we are going to have
at least some governmental
intervention to better align
public and private interest.
So as we go through the session,
we're going to begin
with Frederic, who is going to
concentrate on the policy,
technology interface, largely
through his work with the
European Commission.
But he, like the others
here, has an
entrepreneurial element to him.
It's a policy entrepreneurship,
something
I'm familiar with myself.
And it's really no different to
create an enterprise that
has public policy
purposes, rather
than commercial purposes.
And then, we'll move on through
the other speakers.
I'll introduce them one
by one, as they
come up, very briefly.
And then, you can have a
look at their biogs.
And at the end, we'll reserve
some time for some questions.
So let me leave you with idea
which I stole from Goldman
Sachs, always a nice
thing to do, right?
You may recall that Goldman
Sachs, from its inception, had
the phrase, "long-term greedy."
That was the asset
that Goldman Sachs wanted
to instill.
We want to be "long-term
greedy."
I spoke recently at
their annual CIO
Conference on this theme.
And I asked them, now,
you know about the
climate change issue.
Now, you know about
energy security.
Now, you know about the
significant environmental
problems facing, in particular,
some of the
countries which you very wisely
have targeted for
growth investments.
China comes to mind.
What does "long-term
greedy" mean now?
How do you, lots of brains
in the room, tremendous
investment power, extraordinary
connections in
the world of policy and finance,
how do you interpret
that phrase that's been an
important part of the culture
of your great investment firm?
How do you interpret "long-term
greedy" now?
Because, ideally, you'd take
that concept, and you'd align
it with the discussion we're
about to have. So, Frederic,
lead us off.
