>With topsoil disappearing at a rate of 1 percent a year and “only 30 to 70 good harvest years left depending on your location,”
Well, that's definitely a scary framing. Does anyone have sources for this specific prediction?
Aside from launching his (for-profit) climate fund, (for-profit) vc investments, and funding research, I'd be very interested in more details on how the money will be used.
There are solutions to this- driving through eastern Colorado and west Kansas you'll find many farmers using no-till techniques and planting winter cover-crops that create topsoil and increase soil quality. Farmers have a vested economic interest in keeping the soil productive.
Meanwhile from what I understand from talking with some friends in agricultural engineering in places like California where farmers expect to be pushed off their land eventually by rising land prices they are using destructive practices to extract as much as they can before they go defunct.
The USDA is offering incentives for good soil stewardship and the 2018 Farm Bill featured a number of soil health policies, such as restrictions on pesticides and a soil carbon pilot program: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/mae-wu/final-farm-bill-blossoms...
“Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture”, by Russel Smith (1929) is an excellent, well sourced book on the subject. The title also hints at the origin of the term “permaculture”, popularized by Bill Mollison.
There’s a lot of solid scientific evidence out there for soil repair as carbon sequestration; in fact the appendix of the IPCC report that shook the world last year lists soil repair as one of the top things we can do to address climate change.
The scary part is that even if you cannot provide food to even, let's say 3% of the human population, it will create massive destabilization, initially in the part of the world affected, then globally. I remember that at the start of the various Arab Spring revolts, protests were about the cost of food.
I have never been to Egypt, and maybe I have a distorted view of the situation there, but I don't understand how it can sustain a population of 100 millions, on basically a thin strip of arable land around the Nile surrounded by a huge barren desert. It can not be sustainable.
> Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said on Friday.
>Well, that's definitely a scary framing. Does anyone have sources for this specific prediction?
I read somewhere that the energy required to produce a unit of basic food products (say, wheat) has been multiplied multiple times over the last centuries because of overuse and pollution - despite the high efficiency of current machines and chemical fertilizers. I can't find the source but would be glad to find it or a refutal.
I have reread this article as some of the comments made me question whether or not I understood it or not.
I had assumed that Jeremy Grantham was investing his wealth to save the planet, this was the conclusion that the author presents at the end of the article under the title "Bottom Line".
But this is not necessarily the case, Mr. Grantham is investing in technology that will show a profit because of climate change, it is a subtle difference but an important one to consider, sort of the grain of salt that should be taken with reading of the article.
> Mr. Grantham is investing in technology that will show a profit because of climate change, it is a subtle difference but an important one to consider, sort of the grain of salt that should be taken with reading of the article.
I bookmarked this NY Times article years ago:
"Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem?"
That title puts his position in a bit different light. I haven't read this one yet but it would be interesting I guess to diff the two articles to see what has changed over the past 7-8 years.
It's definitely the case that Capital will profit--in the short term, of course--from climate change, and there's a good argument to be made that Capital is perpetuating the cataclysmic destruction of our system for such profits.
I'm confused at all the comments focusing on the fact that he intends to make money from this because... so what? Making money is not a bad thing, and he still intends to accomplish good things. One doesn't need to be a martyr to be virtuous.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted. That quote does come from the article and it's is a very real concern. This article seems to be about Grantham's new investment strategy disguised as philanthropy.
Just as vast fortunes were made during the financial crisis of 2008 by selling the markets short ( see the film "The Big Short")
I would expect there are people betting on climate change continuing down its current tragectory, and these people now have a vested interest in making this happen.
I don't know how many other billionaires are putting their money on the pro climate change side but wouldn't a smart investor diversify their portfolio by betting on both the pro and con sides of climate change?
I don't know what the form of such investments would take but can think of a simple one being investing in real estate northern regions where temperatures are currently too cold to support agriculture. Possibly an investment in water desalination plants would also see a gain from climate change.
I'm sure there are many more better examples, my concern is that for every billionaire looking to save the world, there is another looking to make a buck off its collapse.
So what happens when more of these profateers decide to use their vast fortunes to tip the scales further towards the collapse rather than salvation?
You're supposed to diversify your portfolio by betting on uncorrelated things. Betting both that something will go up and down is like placing money on both red and black, it doesn't make you any richer.
Even shorters need to make their gains from someone else. You are assuming that there are many people betting that climate change will not happen ? I think it’s safe to assume that climate change has been priced into the market.
>he gives a talk titled “Race of Our Lives”—the one between the Earth’s rapidly warming temperature and the human beings coming up with ways to fight and adapt to climate change.
Or, the race between the cause coming up with ways to fight and adapt to the effect.
It's possible that human beings are the problem and climate change is the "solution".
"Prophet" who makes one horrifically awful market call after another. He was bullish in February of 2018 (right before implosion), after years of being bearish. What a clown.
As a former fund manager, I found his description of current capitalism quite close to my own. Particularly the bit where he says markets are good at a lot of stuff, but not everything.
Has anyone else had that sort of intellectual journey, where you discover libertarianism, you learn all the tropes, you feel very confident, and then after a while you pull back a bit after finding a few issues? And I suppose on the other side of the spectrum as well?
My philosophy is that one can still hold a mostly libertarian perspective regarding markets (particularly as tools) but with minor stipulations.
I hold that the government's primary role with regulating markets is to aid in the pricing of positive and negative externalities. In particular, a focus on pricing in and intervening for "harms" seems to be philosophically consistent (enough) for me.
> Has anyone else had that sort of intellectual journey, where you discover libertarianism, you learn all the tropes, you feel very confident, and then after a while you pull back a bit after finding a few issues? And I suppose on the other side of the spectrum as well?
For most people, that transition happens between the teenage years and adulthood.
If he is so prophetic why does he only have a billion instead of a trillion dollars? Why must we use such a click-baity word in our headlines? Bloomberg could just say "Investor Jeremy Grantham..."
Going to get downvoted harshly for this, and I deserve some of it.
But let me say, is anyone else just slightly suspicious (don’t have to change your minds though and I agree with the science here) that investing billionaires, people who give truth to the saying “behind every great fortune is a great crime”, would actually be interested in the best possible thing for the world? Doesn’t that sound a little bit suspicious, like a hint from a life that something is afoot?
I think it might be healthy to introduce some doubt into the claims of billionaires no matter what they might be.
However. He just turned 80 and realized there's only so much he can do before he dies and that seems to have focused his priorities. A couple of quotes from the article:
> Grantham turned 80 on Oct. 6. Asked how this milestone shifted his perspective, he pauses. “There’s no quick one-liner on aging,” he says. “We know this is an urgent topic, and I know I don’t have that long to do it.”
And Grantham would probably even agree with you that we should be suspicious of capitalist interests:
> Climate change, politics, and capitalism became frequent topics of Grantham’s quarterly letters. In his view, the U.S. has been pushed into the grip of an unhealthy version of capitalism, one in which corporations put profits way ahead of all other considerations. “The social contract of 1964, when I arrived here, has been totally torn up,” he says. “Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn’t exist for them. Therefore, grandchildren have no value.”
But even more important, your comment hints at the conflict between profit and ecological health, and I think it's the role of government to realign things so that they aren't in conflict — set up regulation so that if you follow them, what you do is genuinely good. From the article:
> While capitalism “does a million things better than any other system,” he says, it fails completely on long-term threats such as climate change. “You must not expect unnecessary good behavior from capitalists,” he says. The answer, he adds, is strong regulations: “I’m sorry, libertarians, it is the only way.”
[+] [-] dhh2106|7 years ago|reply
Well, that's definitely a scary framing. Does anyone have sources for this specific prediction?
Aside from launching his (for-profit) climate fund, (for-profit) vc investments, and funding research, I'd be very interested in more details on how the money will be used.
[+] [-] makerofspoons|7 years ago|reply
Meanwhile from what I understand from talking with some friends in agricultural engineering in places like California where farmers expect to be pushed off their land eventually by rising land prices they are using destructive practices to extract as much as they can before they go defunct.
The USDA is offering incentives for good soil stewardship and the 2018 Farm Bill featured a number of soil health policies, such as restrictions on pesticides and a soil carbon pilot program: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/mae-wu/final-farm-bill-blossoms...
[+] [-] gdubs|7 years ago|reply
There’s a lot of solid scientific evidence out there for soil repair as carbon sequestration; in fact the appendix of the IPCC report that shook the world last year lists soil repair as one of the top things we can do to address climate change.
1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714112.Tree_Crops
[+] [-] seren|7 years ago|reply
I have never been to Egypt, and maybe I have a distorted view of the situation there, but I don't understand how it can sustain a population of 100 millions, on basically a thin strip of arable land around the Nile surrounded by a huge barren desert. It can not be sustainable.
[+] [-] whatok|7 years ago|reply
has that quoted figure and references this: 2 D.R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, University of California Press, 2007.
[+] [-] mooreds|7 years ago|reply
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...
[+] [-] rcMgD2BwE72F|7 years ago|reply
I read somewhere that the energy required to produce a unit of basic food products (say, wheat) has been multiplied multiple times over the last centuries because of overuse and pollution - despite the high efficiency of current machines and chemical fertilizers. I can't find the source but would be glad to find it or a refutal.
[+] [-] sigmaprimus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klenwell|7 years ago|reply
I bookmarked this NY Times article years ago:
"Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/can-jeremy-granth...
That title puts his position in a bit different light. I haven't read this one yet but it would be interesting I guess to diff the two articles to see what has changed over the past 7-8 years.
[+] [-] rexpop|7 years ago|reply
Check out [This Changes Everything](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21913812-this-changes-ev...).
[+] [-] luord|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|7 years ago|reply
The key sentence, buried halfway through the article...
[+] [-] aaronarduino|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sigmaprimus|7 years ago|reply
I don't know what the form of such investments would take but can think of a simple one being investing in real estate northern regions where temperatures are currently too cold to support agriculture. Possibly an investment in water desalination plants would also see a gain from climate change. I'm sure there are many more better examples, my concern is that for every billionaire looking to save the world, there is another looking to make a buck off its collapse. So what happens when more of these profateers decide to use their vast fortunes to tip the scales further towards the collapse rather than salvation?
[+] [-] Pharmakon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw1010|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buboard|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|7 years ago|reply
Or, the race between the cause coming up with ways to fight and adapt to the effect.
It's possible that human beings are the problem and climate change is the "solution".
[+] [-] peaktechisnow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigmaprimus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
Has anyone else had that sort of intellectual journey, where you discover libertarianism, you learn all the tropes, you feel very confident, and then after a while you pull back a bit after finding a few issues? And I suppose on the other side of the spectrum as well?
[+] [-] sremani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clomond|7 years ago|reply
I hold that the government's primary role with regulating markets is to aid in the pricing of positive and negative externalities. In particular, a focus on pricing in and intervening for "harms" seems to be philosophically consistent (enough) for me.
[+] [-] CuriousSkeptic|7 years ago|reply
Reading the Wealth of Networks[2] probably helped to.
I guess I’m even more left now. But really I think it’s time for a synthesis of the left/right ideologies.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|7 years ago|reply
For most people, that transition happens between the teenage years and adulthood.
[+] [-] claydavisss|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] WhompingWindows|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimhefferon|7 years ago|reply
Seriously?
[+] [-] Bucephalus355|7 years ago|reply
But let me say, is anyone else just slightly suspicious (don’t have to change your minds though and I agree with the science here) that investing billionaires, people who give truth to the saying “behind every great fortune is a great crime”, would actually be interested in the best possible thing for the world? Doesn’t that sound a little bit suspicious, like a hint from a life that something is afoot?
I think it might be healthy to introduce some doubt into the claims of billionaires no matter what they might be.
[+] [-] neolefty|7 years ago|reply
However. He just turned 80 and realized there's only so much he can do before he dies and that seems to have focused his priorities. A couple of quotes from the article:
> Grantham turned 80 on Oct. 6. Asked how this milestone shifted his perspective, he pauses. “There’s no quick one-liner on aging,” he says. “We know this is an urgent topic, and I know I don’t have that long to do it.”
And Grantham would probably even agree with you that we should be suspicious of capitalist interests:
> Climate change, politics, and capitalism became frequent topics of Grantham’s quarterly letters. In his view, the U.S. has been pushed into the grip of an unhealthy version of capitalism, one in which corporations put profits way ahead of all other considerations. “The social contract of 1964, when I arrived here, has been totally torn up,” he says. “Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn’t exist for them. Therefore, grandchildren have no value.”
But even more important, your comment hints at the conflict between profit and ecological health, and I think it's the role of government to realign things so that they aren't in conflict — set up regulation so that if you follow them, what you do is genuinely good. From the article:
> While capitalism “does a million things better than any other system,” he says, it fails completely on long-term threats such as climate change. “You must not expect unnecessary good behavior from capitalists,” he says. The answer, he adds, is strong regulations: “I’m sorry, libertarians, it is the only way.”
[+] [-] tdb7893|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leaky_valve|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|7 years ago|reply
I think that you might be on to something...