High-octane capitalism meets climate change, with Chamath Palihapitiya
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2020, Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya said he wanted to create a holding company for climate tech and asked for people to submit their frameworks for making it happen. Whoever was chosen as a finalist would help implement it. He got over 1,500 submissions, but he never ended up making that holding company. Why? Will this ever be possible? Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi talks to Chamath about the difficulty of learning to invest in climate tech, the future of his investing kingdom, and how much you can teach yourself about batteries.
In this episode, we talk about Warren Buffett, investing, and what makes a climate investment. If you want to hear why Buffett thinks an oil company can be a climate bet, check out our episode with Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub:
Oil boss Vicki Hollub is selling 'net-zero oil'. Do you buy it?
Read a transcript of this episode, here.
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green. Special thanks to Bailey Lipschultz, Kira Bindrim, and Brian Eckhouse.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati. This week, Cobalt competition and high-octane capitalism. |
| 0:09.0 | Let's talk about Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. |
| 0:27.0 | Over a 70-year career, he's become an investing icon, known as the Oracle of Omaha. |
| 0:33.9 | Berkshire Hathaway has become one of the most valuable stocks in history, and turned Buffett |
| 0:38.8 | into a mega-billionaire. |
| 0:40.8 | It all started in the 1960s when Buffett bought a textile business called Berkshire Hathaway. |
| 0:46.8 | He used that company as a stable source of income to place other bets, eventually turning it |
| 0:51.8 | into a holding company for all kinds of investments. |
| 0:55.8 | Buffett's investments are not climate-oriented. |
| 0:58.4 | Berkshire holds shares of many carbon-intensive businesses and only some clean energy companies. |
| 1:05.2 | My guest today, Chimaad Pollyha Pithiya, is a venture capitalist and self-proclaimed disciple |
| 1:10.7 | of Buffett. He wanted to create |
| 1:12.8 | a Berkshire for climate, and not because it's the morally right thing to do. People ask me, like, |
| 1:19.4 | are you motivated to solve the climate problem because of your love of the environment? I could |
| 1:26.0 | give you the virtue signaling answer, which is yes, |
| 1:28.6 | but that's not really where my motivation comes. |
| 1:30.6 | My motivation is economic. |
| 1:32.7 | Chimat made his fortune as an early Facebook employee, |
| 1:35.7 | and later with well-timed investments in the tech industry, |
| 1:39.3 | including through a venture capital firm called Social Capital |
| 1:42.2 | that he has been running for a decade. |
| 1:45.5 | In 2020, Chimat put out a call on Twitter. |
... |
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