On this day in 2007 as the IPCC’s 4th assessment report was about to be released, Jeremy Grantham, chairman of a Boston-based fund management company, sent out another of his quarterly letter to clients. It included a commentary on the United States’ policy toward climate change, particularly that of the current administration.
Its title was “While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data,”
It included the observation that
“Successive US administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain.”
David Roberts of Grist called this a “four page assault on US energy policy.”
Given Cheney/Bush’s enthusiasm for coal and oil, and hatred of all things environmental,, it was a fair cop.
Why this matters.
There’s this idea – carefully cultivated and promulgated – that the only people banging on about climate change are Luddites and “leftists.” As Grantham, and others, show, plenty of capitalists can see the nose on their face (n.b. that doesn’t mean capitalism is sustainable).
What happened next?
Grantham has kept it up. In November 2012 he wrote another piece, in Nature, that is well worth your time – “Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary)”
According to Wikipedia, that source of all reliable information “In August 2019, he dedicated 98% (approximately $1 billion) of his personal wealth to fight climate change. Grantham believes that investing in green technologies, is a profitable investment on the long run, claiming that decarbonizing the economy will be an investing bonanza for those who know it’s coming.[26”
Oh, and he thinks the bubble is about to burst.