What investors need to know about technology and climate change: the race of our lives - Video

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment public lecture by Jeremy Grantham CBE, introduced and chaired by Lord Stern of Brentford.

View the presentation slides from this lecture

Very few investors realise how rapidly the environment is being wounded, not just by climate change but also by overuse and by chemical waste.  We may have created a world that is simply hostile to most living creatures including us.

Contrastingly, very few realise how favourably and dramatically fast the relevant science is progressing and the cost of necessary technologies declining.  These opposite forces will determine whether we can even retain a world with as stable a global society as we have today, a modest definition of success.  The results will certainly transform the entire world of energy, resources and food in a few decades with unprecedented financial consequences.

Jeremy Grantham 

Jeremy Grantham is a co-founder of GMO, LLC, an investment management firm in Boston that currently manages approximately $75 billion, predominately for large institutions. He is the firm’s chief investment strategist, chairman of the board, an active member of its asset allocation division and the author of a quarterly letter to clients.  In addition to providing an investment outlook, the letter has covered issues of financial ethics, deficiencies in capitalism, resource limitations and problems posed by a changing climate.

In 1998 Jeremy and his wife Hannelore established the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment which seeks to protect and improve the health of the global environment.  The foundation’s grants focus on climate change and biodiversity conservation, with an emphasis on international initiatives.  Key funding programs include the establishment of research institutes at LSE and Imperial College both in London and the center at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Jeremy is a trustee of The Nature Conservancy.  He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Sheffield (U.K.) and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and holds honorary degrees from the New School, University of Sheffield (New York) and Imperial College London.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.