John Doerr Presentation on Greentech at TED

John Doerr of venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins gave a speech entitled "Seeking salvation and profit in greentech" at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference in Monterey California in May of 2007 which turned out to be one of the most talked about moments of the year... and for good reason.

I watched it tonight and was incredibly moved. I remember hearing about it and I think I caught some little clips of it on YouTube but I had never taken time to watch the full 18 minutes through. The TED website has this and many other incredible presentations all available in high quality video. It'll keep you enthralled for hours so beware. John's presentation tugs at heartstrings as he mentions a dinner conversation with his 15 year old daughter in which she innocently accuses his generation of causing the current climate crisis and demands that he fix it.

As he repeats many times during his presentation, he's afraid that all we're doing is not enough. He discusses a number of big advances that companies and politicians and scientists are completing right now and after each passionately contrasts the scale of the advance against the size of the problem, in our country and within the world. I really enjoyed his comment about us only having "one atmosphere" regardless of how much we want to think this is a problem that we can solve in the United States alone.

His passionate closing to the presentation is what caused so much stir and it really was the perfect exclamation point to an issue that seems to continue to be understated.