--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.