Name: Meet The Hedge Fund Founder Now Taking On Climate Change
Uploaded: 2024-09-18
Duration: 21 min 2 s
Description: Tom Steyer, longtime Democratic fundraiser, has now set his sights on investing in companies with climate impact.

<p>So, so let me take one step back. I'll address the overall business agenda. But first, let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more. And people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story. Andre and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate Democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm here with Tom Steyer. Tom. Thank you for being here, Diane. It's great to be here with you. You built this massive hedge fund, would it go from 6 million to more than 20 billion, I think in 25 years? So kudos to you for that talk a little bit about the role of government because let's, I don't want you know, I know that you ran obviously to be the Democratic candidate in the last election. Um The Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, clearly those have been factors potentially as catalysts towards the green economy. How important is it that we get a certain regime in? Because business is moving in this direction anyway, I mean, I wrote a book basically making the point that this is an economic opportunity and the only way it's gonna happen is by winning in the marketplace. So I'm an absolute believer in business and absolute believer in capitalism. But having said that this has to be a public, private partnership. So if we can take a step back and talk about why we're talking about this at all, why are we going, do we need to talk about an energy transition? Why is this not just something that happens in the world of commerce without any conversation or poli politization, very simply the world has run on fossil fuels for a long time and they use of fossil fuels is very highly correlated with an increase in incomes for the people in those countries. So you can go back and see that we've gotten a lot richer as a people, not just in the United States, but around the world. As we've used fossil fuels. There was no intention to emit CO2. There was no intention to create global warming. There was no intention to have un you know, vast unintended consequences but we did. So the real issue here is we have a, a huge industry polluting in a very destructive way which they never intended to do but which they're not paying for and they love it and who wouldn't? So it's like, of course they do. But the issue is when we talk about government. Ok. What is the IRA? It was basically subsidies for clean industries. So instead of taxing polluters, they're paying people to produce things that don't pollute. It's kind of a tax on its head, a subsidy for non polluters because a straight marketplace won't work. One thing. One quote I like from your book that um you're skeptical of any solution that requires humanity's collective heart to grow three sizes, nice solution to the grinch there. But, but talk is our instinct to, to do the right thing. Is it just inertia? I mean, well, let me say this and I'll give you an example because this actually is happening. The the statistic I think I like to use the most. Is this one in last year, 2023 of new electricity generation globally, 86% of it was renewable. 14% of it was fossil fuels. So the business case is compelling and the reason people did that no one did that to be nice. Abs there was no person who said I'm willing to pay higher for clean energy. It, it turns out that solar and wind are much, much much cheaper than natural gas. And that is a, that is a disparity that is only gonna widen if you look at the co you know, as we all know, there is a $14,000 Chinese plug in hybrid that will go 1200 from byd. My point being look, technology beats dead dinosaurs. And that is a spread batteries got 80% cheaper in the last decade. They'll get 80% cheaper. Again, this decade, solar costs are down to a penny per kilowatt hour. Are they gonna go lower? Yes. So that's the power of innovation and that's the power of business and commerce and you know, intentionality. Yes, that's gonna, but there's a lot more to it than that. And the question is, how fast do we deploy the existing technologies? How do we create and deploy the new technologies in the problems that haven't been? So, can I go back to when you were because you started on Wall Street and you know, it, you put it that way, but would you have been able to make money through the nineties through the early in, in any kind of investment or is it really that this moment in time? Because gal and I started in 2021 was putting solar panels on the roof of the White House in the 19 seventies. That energy was far more expensive than fossil fuel energy. He was and he was doing it for different reasons. He was doing it because of the oil embargo. Nowadays, it's much cheaper. I mean, what's happened is the costs have crossed in new technologies. There's a thing called the S curve. So it's like you go along trying to get better than the existing technology and when the cost curves and the efficiencies cross, so now the new technology is better, it goes up like almost in a straight line and it levels out about 80%. And that's going back to, you know, replacing quail oil in the 18 forties. I want to pause because you are in San Francisco, you know, so not necessarily of Silicon Valley but around there. And Silicon Valley has had um been lukewarm at best to the Democrats, not because of the climate issues, but more because of antitrust and other regulatory issues. Uh I know you're not in the government. I don't want to make you a spokesperson for government, but how do you think about the overall business agenda? So, so let me take one step back, I'll address the overall business agenda. But first let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more and people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story and, and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. There are a group of people, many of whom have actually left Silicon Valley and now live in Austin or Miami who are, who don't like the way California is run, who don't like high taxes and who are, as you said, worried about antitrust. Having said that when I look back at what is, you know, creates business success in my mind, the times when America was growing the fastest, we had very, very high marginal tax rates, very high, much higher than today, maybe double today during Eisenhower, during Kennedy during LBJ, we had really high marginal tax rates in this country. We didn't have the disparity in income. If you look at the simple, how much does the CEO of a company make compared to how much does the lowest worker in that company make? Three or 400 times? It, it was a fraction of that, it was a much more equal society in multiple ways. So I'm confident that this idea of low taxes, low government, everybody get out of the way. I mean, it just doesn't work. That is not the means for a successful society. If you look state by state, how people have done? Look, I mean, people are very mad at California who don't live in California, but California has a really high, we're the fifth biggest economy in the world. We have incredibly successful businesses. You know. So to me, the, the, this whole idea that cut taxes, cut, government cut taxes, cut government cut support, get rid of education, that can't help get rid of, you know, eee everything. I don't think that makes any sense and, and so it, it has never worked. That's not what the data says. But if you have an income stream of X dollars and you can either tax it at 50% or 25 people are like, I much prefer 25. That's much better. Exactly. Human nature comes into play one thing that maybe it's a symptom of the polarized times we're in. But business leaders are often remarkably silent on political issues with one because you get very attacked. Now it's quite transparent, you know, things go viral. I was speaking to Steve Baller the other day about his USA facts that he's trying to get out there to correct misinformation. I'd love to get your thoughts. Obviously, I know you've been in the political arena, but what is the role of business leaders in speaking up about these topics, climate change or otherwise? Well, let me say what I would like my role to be and how I perceive as a professional investor and professional business person, how, how I would like to and of course, I have my opinions just like the other 330 million Americans. But what I would like to do is have enough granular information that I can share accurately with elected officials and people in government so they can make better decisions. So if we, you know, I'm obviously focused on the energy transition and on climate. And I want, I know that people in Washington DC can't go to venture capital meetings on Sand Hill Road, but I can't but are facts. What drive decision making in Washington? Not always I take your point, but I want the people who are making decisions to know the facts and it's, it's, they can't get them on their own that they just 24 hours in the day, they have a full time job, they can't do it. I view what I would like to do is to be able to say this is what we're seeing. These are the actual numbers. You should know this is what solar costs, this is where it's going, these are where batteries are going. You're, you're looking at this technology for direct air capture. This is what we see in terms of the cost per ton of sequestration. This is what we see in terms of scalability. You can believe it or not, you can get your own experts. But we've looked at this seriously. We're putting, you know, we're investing basis on our research. That's what we see. You should, you know, it's interesting, we always talk about what the private sector can bring to the public sector, you know, efficiency, facts, getting things done. We rarely talk about what the public sector can bring to the private sector in terms of how you get things done. I'm curious even your time on the campaign trail, were there any lessons gleaned from that, that you've taken into the world of business? And you can see this very granularly this year, the people who are running corporations, particularly public corporations believe that their career success, their jobs, their pay and their integrity, very importantly is based on increasing earnings for their shareholders. And so any time they're telling you that there's something more important to them than increasing earnings for their shareholders. I would check my, you know, watch to see if they lifted it. They have a job to do with an integrity and responsibility to take seriously. Those are not people who should be setting the agenda for this country. They should be setting the facts, they should be implementing, they should be working within the framework that elected officials who are the embodiment of the people set. And so look, elected officials have a different responsibility, their job, their integrity, their success, their reputation involves getting re elected or elected in the first place, which means satisfying people that they're representing in a significant way. That's their job. And so I don't, I try not to mix up those two different things. And I think that any time you see someone in one of those spheres, talking about how they're really concerned about the other sphere. Decision making is different too, right? So different. And so I, I view it as it's gotta be the way the United States has traditionally worked is we're a democratic society, the will of the people rules, they set the rules, they should set the rules. That's our morality and integrity. And within that box business people work. So you call yourself an optimist. Let's let's drill down on that a little bit. Let's talk about the optimistic investor. Where are you putting, where are your biggest bets? Right now? My old friend and partner Katie and I Katie Hall and I started a multi strategy investment firm to invest into the energy transition in multiple strategies. So that includes venture and growth and includes real estate buying buildings and turning them to net zero. But you know, it involves public stocks, but it we have plans to do many strategies because we believe this transition, as I said, inevitably has to happen is happening very fast that it's a huge tailwind to investing so that there is a strong commercial argument. This is a place where people, professional investors with great experience can marry that to domain expertise, specific knowledge of these markets and get very good returns and also have great impact as a citizen, I suppose. Are you worried about the state of democracy right now? We obviously from my standpoint, we have someone who has a real chance to be president who has said, who tried to overturn the last election. You paid $10 million I think to try. And with the impeachment battle, I remember that I, who I think is, you know, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, who has made multiple statements about what he would do in terms of the law and in terms of future elections, if he's elected, it's a little hard to read between all the very confusing statements, but clearly somebody who, you know, it's not someone who loves elections, not someone who loves democracy and not someone who respects it. So am I worried about that? I think that that would be, you know, a big threat to democracy. Do I believe that the American people will get back their democracy if we ever lose it? Yes, I believe it's built into us in a very deep way. It is built into me in a very deep way and I'd be willing to go very far piece to try and make sure we secure it. But is there someone running for president who has said things that are profoundly undemocratic and has made threats to our democracy repeatedly and said, you know, talked about things who's going and then has lived up to it in the past. I think we all know that it's true. So that's scary. Is there anything else on your radar right now? You want to put on ours. So I would say this, I do think the technology is better than people understand in terms of climate, our ability to solve these problems is much better than people understand. It's also true that the news from the natural world which I follow obsessively is worse than people understand. And in some cases, far worse and far scarier than people understand. Adaptability is as much as fighting climate change. So I know this is a real race between what's going, the deterioration of the natural world that we all rely on and the incredible progress in the technological world. But if we win that race and you step back and think about where we're going to be as a hu as human beings, as Americans, we will be able to create a much better world than we've ever imagined. You know, in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of equality, in terms of all the important parts about life, you're gonna have an ability given the other advances that we're making, which are incredible to really provide a way of living for the people in America and including people all over the world. That is really almost better than we can imagine. And that's why I'm so focused on trying to make sure that we have a sustainable natural world because we do depend on it. And if we don't, then all we're not going to have time to focus on this because we're going to live in a chaotic, dangerous, unhealthy and scary world living to 100 doesn't make much difference if you can't go outside and, and I'll give you 11 small example. I mean, one of the things that the UN projects is that on the course we are going, we will have 20 to 25 million climate refugees per year. Syria had 5 million refugees partly related to climate and that completely roiled Europe as they moved into different countries in Europe, 20 to 25 million refugees a year every year. That is something that is a profound threat to the security of our political systems around the world. So let's drill down a little on the actual technologies that you're investing in that you think are exciting right now. So let me say this, we are deploying a lot of existing technologies like wind and solar and evs and batteries that everybody knows about that are getting much better. But we all know that what people don't know is that there are literally hundreds of new technologies being developed, not only to see if they work, but to see if they work at a price that works for customers. And you know, that is a real difference. So for instance, one of the things that I find fascinating is for a long time, we've had what's called geothermal energy that's basically hot water under the earth. So if you think about old faithful and Yellowstone, the water comes up, it's hot, it's energy you can use it. You know, just the way you can use natural gas or wind or solar. What's changed is people are now using basically techniques from oil and gas to go down 5000 ft, not 500 ft, but 5000 ft. And they're able to get completely clean, baseload energy. So there's no question about when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. It's always there. Baseload energy that is completely clean emits no CO2 and which is commercial so it can be done at a price that competes. Now, there's a real question about how big this can be, but this is one of 100 technologies where you go like, oh God breaking down plastic. I've seen a lot of those as well. There is there, I've seen techniques on plastics that are amazing. We know there's plastic pollution. We recycle only 6% of plastics, only 6% to 94% does not get recycled. So the question is gonna be, how are we, first of all going to pick it out, sort it and reuse it. There are amazing technologies going on in that involving all kinds of different, you know, skills and really incredible new machines. So as we see this, it's exciting to know that there's a machine that can look at this and pick out 10,000 different items. It's in humans can't do that. That's incredible. So let me clar you invest in. So you're not investing seed capital. First of all, you're, you're investing in these companies. Are you helping them to replicate its scale? Is that part of what we're doing? Multi strategy? So we do do seed, we do do venture and growth, we do do real estate. I mean, what, what we're trying to do is figure out strategies where basically we can be really profitable in decarbonization. We're not concessionary. We never, we're not asking people not to get good returns. We're not at all concessionary. In fact, we believe this transition is a tail wind that has to happen, doesn't mean every company will succeed. You still have to be a professional investor. You have to have domain expertise in this area, you have to marry the two and that's the structure and doing good doesn't mean you can't make a good return. If you're not getting a good return, you're not going to get a chance to do good for us. Thank you so much for having me.</p>

Tom Steyer, longtime Democratic fundraiser, has now set his sights on investing in companies with climate impact.

Meet The Hedge Fund Founder Now Taking On Climate Change

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photo provided by Galvanize Climate Solutions. 

Leadership

Tom Steyer has now set his sights on investing in companies with climate impact.

So, so let me take one step back. I'll address the overall business agenda. But first, let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more. And people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story. Andre and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate Democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm here with Tom Steyer. Tom. Thank you for being here, Diane. It's great to be here with you. You built this massive hedge fund, would it go from 6 million to more than 20 billion, I think in 25 years? So kudos to you for that talk a little bit about the role of government because let's, I don't want you know, I know that you ran obviously to be the Democratic candidate in the last election. Um The Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, clearly those have been factors potentially as catalysts towards the green economy. How important is it that we get a certain regime in? Because business is moving in this direction anyway, I mean, I wrote a book basically making the point that this is an economic opportunity and the only way it's gonna happen is by winning in the marketplace. So I'm an absolute believer in business and absolute believer in capitalism. But having said that this has to be a public, private partnership. So if we can take a step back and talk about why we're talking about this at all, why are we going, do we need to talk about an energy transition? Why is this not just something that happens in the world of commerce without any conversation or poli politization, very simply the world has run on fossil fuels for a long time and they use of fossil fuels is very highly correlated with an increase in incomes for the people in those countries. So you can go back and see that we've gotten a lot richer as a people, not just in the United States, but around the world. As we've used fossil fuels. There was no intention to emit CO2. There was no intention to create global warming. There was no intention to have un you know, vast unintended consequences but we did. So the real issue here is we have a, a huge industry polluting in a very destructive way which they never intended to do but which they're not paying for and they love it and who wouldn't? So it's like, of course they do. But the issue is when we talk about government. Ok. What is the IRA? It was basically subsidies for clean industries. So instead of taxing polluters, they're paying people to produce things that don't pollute. It's kind of a tax on its head, a subsidy for non polluters because a straight marketplace won't work. One thing. One quote I like from your book that um you're skeptical of any solution that requires humanity's collective heart to grow three sizes, nice solution to the grinch there. But, but talk is our instinct to, to do the right thing. Is it just inertia? I mean, well, let me say this and I'll give you an example because this actually is happening. The the statistic I think I like to use the most. Is this one in last year, 2023 of new electricity generation globally, 86% of it was renewable. 14% of it was fossil fuels. So the business case is compelling and the reason people did that no one did that to be nice. Abs there was no person who said I'm willing to pay higher for clean energy. It, it turns out that solar and wind are much, much much cheaper than natural gas. And that is a, that is a disparity that is only gonna widen if you look at the co you know, as we all know, there is a $14,000 Chinese plug in hybrid that will go 1200 from byd. My point being look, technology beats dead dinosaurs. And that is a spread batteries got 80% cheaper in the last decade. They'll get 80% cheaper. Again, this decade, solar costs are down to a penny per kilowatt hour. Are they gonna go lower? Yes. So that's the power of innovation and that's the power of business and commerce and you know, intentionality. Yes, that's gonna, but there's a lot more to it than that. And the question is, how fast do we deploy the existing technologies? How do we create and deploy the new technologies in the problems that haven't been? So, can I go back to when you were because you started on Wall Street and you know, it, you put it that way, but would you have been able to make money through the nineties through the early in, in any kind of investment or is it really that this moment in time? Because gal and I started in 2021 was putting solar panels on the roof of the White House in the 19 seventies. That energy was far more expensive than fossil fuel energy. He was and he was doing it for different reasons. He was doing it because of the oil embargo. Nowadays, it's much cheaper. I mean, what's happened is the costs have crossed in new technologies. There's a thing called the S curve. So it's like you go along trying to get better than the existing technology and when the cost curves and the efficiencies cross, so now the new technology is better, it goes up like almost in a straight line and it levels out about 80%. And that's going back to, you know, replacing quail oil in the 18 forties. I want to pause because you are in San Francisco, you know, so not necessarily of Silicon Valley but around there. And Silicon Valley has had um been lukewarm at best to the Democrats, not because of the climate issues, but more because of antitrust and other regulatory issues. Uh I know you're not in the government. I don't want to make you a spokesperson for government, but how do you think about the overall business agenda? So, so let me take one step back, I'll address the overall business agenda. But first let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more and people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story and, and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. There are a group of people, many of whom have actually left Silicon Valley and now live in Austin or Miami who are, who don't like the way California is run, who don't like high taxes and who are, as you said, worried about antitrust. Having said that when I look back at what is, you know, creates business success in my mind, the times when America was growing the fastest, we had very, very high marginal tax rates, very high, much higher than today, maybe double today during Eisenhower, during Kennedy during LBJ, we had really high marginal tax rates in this country. We didn't have the disparity in income. If you look at the simple, how much does the CEO of a company make compared to how much does the lowest worker in that company make? Three or 400 times? It, it was a fraction of that, it was a much more equal society in multiple ways. So I'm confident that this idea of low taxes, low government, everybody get out of the way. I mean, it just doesn't work. That is not the means for a successful society. If you look state by state, how people have done? Look, I mean, people are very mad at California who don't live in California, but California has a really high, we're the fifth biggest economy in the world. We have incredibly successful businesses. You know. So to me, the, the, this whole idea that cut taxes, cut, government cut taxes, cut government cut support, get rid of education, that can't help get rid of, you know, eee everything. I don't think that makes any sense and, and so it, it has never worked. That's not what the data says. But if you have an income stream of X dollars and you can either tax it at 50% or 25 people are like, I much prefer 25. That's much better. Exactly. Human nature comes into play one thing that maybe it's a symptom of the polarized times we're in. But business leaders are often remarkably silent on political issues with one because you get very attacked. Now it's quite transparent, you know, things go viral. I was speaking to Steve Baller the other day about his USA facts that he's trying to get out there to correct misinformation. I'd love to get your thoughts. Obviously, I know you've been in the political arena, but what is the role of business leaders in speaking up about these topics, climate change or otherwise? Well, let me say what I would like my role to be and how I perceive as a professional investor and professional business person, how, how I would like to and of course, I have my opinions just like the other 330 million Americans. But what I would like to do is have enough granular information that I can share accurately with elected officials and people in government so they can make better decisions. So if we, you know, I'm obviously focused on the energy transition and on climate. And I want, I know that people in Washington DC can't go to venture capital meetings on Sand Hill Road, but I can't but are facts. What drive decision making in Washington? Not always I take your point, but I want the people who are making decisions to know the facts and it's, it's, they can't get them on their own that they just 24 hours in the day, they have a full time job, they can't do it. I view what I would like to do is to be able to say this is what we're seeing. These are the actual numbers. You should know this is what solar costs, this is where it's going, these are where batteries are going. You're, you're looking at this technology for direct air capture. This is what we see in terms of the cost per ton of sequestration. This is what we see in terms of scalability. You can believe it or not, you can get your own experts. But we've looked at this seriously. We're putting, you know, we're investing basis on our research. That's what we see. You should, you know, it's interesting, we always talk about what the private sector can bring to the public sector, you know, efficiency, facts, getting things done. We rarely talk about what the public sector can bring to the private sector in terms of how you get things done. I'm curious even your time on the campaign trail, were there any lessons gleaned from that, that you've taken into the world of business? And you can see this very granularly this year, the people who are running corporations, particularly public corporations believe that their career success, their jobs, their pay and their integrity, very importantly is based on increasing earnings for their shareholders. And so any time they're telling you that there's something more important to them than increasing earnings for their shareholders. I would check my, you know, watch to see if they lifted it. They have a job to do with an integrity and responsibility to take seriously. Those are not people who should be setting the agenda for this country. They should be setting the facts, they should be implementing, they should be working within the framework that elected officials who are the embodiment of the people set. And so look, elected officials have a different responsibility, their job, their integrity, their success, their reputation involves getting re elected or elected in the first place, which means satisfying people that they're representing in a significant way. That's their job. And so I don't, I try not to mix up those two different things. And I think that any time you see someone in one of those spheres, talking about how they're really concerned about the other sphere. Decision making is different too, right? So different. And so I, I view it as it's gotta be the way the United States has traditionally worked is we're a democratic society, the will of the people rules, they set the rules, they should set the rules. That's our morality and integrity. And within that box business people work. So you call yourself an optimist. Let's let's drill down on that a little bit. Let's talk about the optimistic investor. Where are you putting, where are your biggest bets? Right now? My old friend and partner Katie and I Katie Hall and I started a multi strategy investment firm to invest into the energy transition in multiple strategies. So that includes venture and growth and includes real estate buying buildings and turning them to net zero. But you know, it involves public stocks, but it we have plans to do many strategies because we believe this transition, as I said, inevitably has to happen is happening very fast that it's a huge tailwind to investing so that there is a strong commercial argument. This is a place where people, professional investors with great experience can marry that to domain expertise, specific knowledge of these markets and get very good returns and also have great impact as a citizen, I suppose. Are you worried about the state of democracy right now? We obviously from my standpoint, we have someone who has a real chance to be president who has said, who tried to overturn the last election. You paid $10 million I think to try. And with the impeachment battle, I remember that I, who I think is, you know, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, who has made multiple statements about what he would do in terms of the law and in terms of future elections, if he's elected, it's a little hard to read between all the very confusing statements, but clearly somebody who, you know, it's not someone who loves elections, not someone who loves democracy and not someone who respects it. So am I worried about that? I think that that would be, you know, a big threat to democracy. Do I believe that the American people will get back their democracy if we ever lose it? Yes, I believe it's built into us in a very deep way. It is built into me in a very deep way and I'd be willing to go very far piece to try and make sure we secure it. But is there someone running for president who has said things that are profoundly undemocratic and has made threats to our democracy repeatedly and said, you know, talked about things who's going and then has lived up to it in the past. I think we all know that it's true. So that's scary. Is there anything else on your radar right now? You want to put on ours. So I would say this, I do think the technology is better than people understand in terms of climate, our ability to solve these problems is much better than people understand. It's also true that the news from the natural world which I follow obsessively is worse than people understand. And in some cases, far worse and far scarier than people understand. Adaptability is as much as fighting climate change. So I know this is a real race between what's going, the deterioration of the natural world that we all rely on and the incredible progress in the technological world. But if we win that race and you step back and think about where we're going to be as a hu as human beings, as Americans, we will be able to create a much better world than we've ever imagined. You know, in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of equality, in terms of all the important parts about life, you're gonna have an ability given the other advances that we're making, which are incredible to really provide a way of living for the people in America and including people all over the world. That is really almost better than we can imagine. And that's why I'm so focused on trying to make sure that we have a sustainable natural world because we do depend on it. And if we don't, then all we're not going to have time to focus on this because we're going to live in a chaotic, dangerous, unhealthy and scary world living to 100 doesn't make much difference if you can't go outside and, and I'll give you 11 small example. I mean, one of the things that the UN projects is that on the course we are going, we will have 20 to 25 million climate refugees per year. Syria had 5 million refugees partly related to climate and that completely roiled Europe as they moved into different countries in Europe, 20 to 25 million refugees a year every year. That is something that is a profound threat to the security of our political systems around the world. So let's drill down a little on the actual technologies that you're investing in that you think are exciting right now. So let me say this, we are deploying a lot of existing technologies like wind and solar and evs and batteries that everybody knows about that are getting much better. But we all know that what people don't know is that there are literally hundreds of new technologies being developed, not only to see if they work, but to see if they work at a price that works for customers. And you know, that is a real difference. So for instance, one of the things that I find fascinating is for a long time, we've had what's called geothermal energy that's basically hot water under the earth. So if you think about old faithful and Yellowstone, the water comes up, it's hot, it's energy you can use it. You know, just the way you can use natural gas or wind or solar. What's changed is people are now using basically techniques from oil and gas to go down 5000 ft, not 500 ft, but 5000 ft. And they're able to get completely clean, baseload energy. So there's no question about when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. It's always there. Baseload energy that is completely clean emits no CO2 and which is commercial so it can be done at a price that competes. Now, there's a real question about how big this can be, but this is one of 100 technologies where you go like, oh God breaking down plastic. I've seen a lot of those as well. There is there, I've seen techniques on plastics that are amazing. We know there's plastic pollution. We recycle only 6% of plastics, only 6% to 94% does not get recycled. So the question is gonna be, how are we, first of all going to pick it out, sort it and reuse it. There are amazing technologies going on in that involving all kinds of different, you know, skills and really incredible new machines. So as we see this, it's exciting to know that there's a machine that can look at this and pick out 10,000 different items. It's in humans can't do that. That's incredible. So let me clar you invest in. So you're not investing seed capital. First of all, you're, you're investing in these companies. Are you helping them to replicate its scale? Is that part of what we're doing? Multi strategy? So we do do seed, we do do venture and growth, we do do real estate. I mean, what, what we're trying to do is figure out strategies where basically we can be really profitable in decarbonization. We're not concessionary. We never, we're not asking people not to get good returns. We're not at all concessionary. In fact, we believe this transition is a tail wind that has to happen, doesn't mean every company will succeed. You still have to be a professional investor. You have to have domain expertise in this area, you have to marry the two and that's the structure and doing good doesn't mean you can't make a good return. If you're not getting a good return, you're not going to get a chance to do good for us. Thank you so much for having me.