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[MUSIC] Thank you very much for joining us today.
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We couldn't imagine a better speaker for this memorial lecture.
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We have all sorts of topics to discuss from your investing career, to your work on the environment, to your recent political activism.
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Before we get there, I wanted to start with your time as a GSB student.
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Back when you were in these seats, metaphorically speaking, did you ever imagine you would be on this stage as a view from the top speaker?
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>> [LAUGH] >> I can't say I was thinking this far forward, and I can't say I really understood the significance when I was going to Stanford Business School, to Stanford Business School, in terms of leadership in our society.
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So, I think I have a different perspective of the importance of this institution now.
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And obviously, I'm a lot older and have [INAUDIBLE] and wouldn't have time for anything. >> Fair enough.
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I mean, we're all facing the same types of constraints here.
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Another question for you, what was your most influential class at the GSB?
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>> So, I think I'd chase two classes, I'll equivocate. One was touchy feely.
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I don't know, do they still do interpersonal dynamics? >> [LAUGH] >> Yes.
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>> So, I love touchy feely, because it was a chance to see how people interact in a much more honest way than when people are normally very controlled.
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And also, when I went home for Christmas break, and my father looked at me and goes, is this a class, seriously?
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So I love that too, just annoying him.
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But I also took a course here in International Economics that was, I thought absolutely brilliant in terms about thinking about basically competitive advantage on a national level.
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And thinking about what makes societies work, what makes societies productive, why do some societies move forward really well?
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And what are the reasons that other societies have continuing problems?
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And I thought that was something that I never looked at so systematically.
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It was really a brilliant course.
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>> Speaking of making societies productive, let's now turn to your early days as an investor.
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You were a rising star at Goldman when Wall Street was booming, and in less than a year, you had moved to San Francisco to start-up a small merger arbitrage hedge fund.
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What gave you the confidence to make this sudden change?
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>> So let's be clear, when I moved back out here from Goldman, first of all, my wife wanted to live west of the Mississippi, period.
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So, I knew that Goldman Sachs was in New York, and therefore, I was going to have to leave.
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It's also true that I got in a gigantic fight with a guy I was working for, and therefore, I felt like, under no circumstances do I want to continue to go to work and see that guy every morning.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Which was not a great career move.
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But also, I felt like one of the things I love about investing is you can measure the results.
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And I felt like, if I do a bad job at Goldman Sachs, they're going to fire me.
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If I do a bad job on my own, I'm also going to get fired.
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But if I do a good job on my own, I'd have much more upside then I do at Goldman Sachs.
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And so, I didn't think I was taking more risk because I felt like, either way, if you don't do a good job in life, it doesn't work out.
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So, I was more than willing to bet on myself in the sense that if you're taking that risk anyway, why not at least give yourself the up side?
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>> And have the opportunity to go surfing on weekends is helpful.
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>> [LAUGH] >> We did want to live west of the Mississippi.
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>> [LAUGH] You then went from $10 million in seed capital, to managing about $20 billion by the time you stepped down from Fairlawn in 2012.
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What challenges did you face as the fund scaled, particularly those related to leadership?
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>> First of all, one of the things that we tried to do was to grow gradually.
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Because I felt if you went from $10 million to $20 million, that wasn't a step function, so that you could change your team slowly enough, so that you continue to do the job.
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If you went from $10 million to $300 million, you're in a completely different business, and you're taking a gigantic risk, with whether you have the capability to actually perform that function.
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So, we really grew very consistently, but we never grew geometrically.
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I will say this, when I think back to what we were doing at Farallon, and when I'm mad at myself, I think that there's a rule in organizations that up to 125 people, you don't have to be that formally organized.
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And I remember being here in the HP wave, management by walking around.
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That's what I really like to do, was just talk to everybody, and try and stay up to date, and hear what the problems were.
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And we had a very open office physically so that there were no walls.
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There were no offices, so that there was a lot of internal communication, whether people wanted it or not.
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I think above 125 people, you start to really need rules, and you really need hierarchy, and you really need a way of organizing people. And we did do that.
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But if there's one thing that I would fault myself for, and I do get mad about it is, I think at some point, we had a very, very flat organization.
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And I really did feel like we made decisions listening to everybody very clearly, and we didn't really have a hierarchical decision making.
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And if I were doing it again, I would be a little more insistent that the people who proved themselves, into which I would throw my name, should get a little more decision making than some of the people who thought they knew a heck of a lot and then would be like, my gosh, I had no idea that would happen.
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Usually I'm like, well, that's what I was talking to you about for the last six months.
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And so, I, there is, when I think back to growth as you get more larger, you actually have to able to have some system, where the senior people really do have to listen, have to take into account.
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But ultimately, they're supposed to be in the position that they're going to get hung if it doesn't turn out to be a good decision, so the younger people should defer to them, until they can get in that position.
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>> As you were growing consistently, one thing that was also growing was Fairlawn's investments in the coal industry.
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Fairlawn became one of the major players in sustaining and growing the coal industry in Australia, Indonesia, and China.
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Knowing what you know now, in a different time, would you have made those investments again? >> No.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Look, I would say, somewhere around ten years ago, basically I was sitting here thinking about what was going to turn out to be a huge problem.
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And I started to really focus on climate, and then I started to look at all our investments differently.
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And so, it really was a situation where I felt like up till then, we invested in every single industry including fossil fuels, which were probably less than proportionate to what they are in the whole worldwide economy, or the American economy, but definitely significant investments.
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And starting about ten years ago, I realized, wow, this is just going to be a gigantic problem.
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And I've gotta not only stop doing this, but I've gotta get out of this, which I did do, and have done.
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But I feel like, do I wish that I'd come to that conclusion 10 years or 20? Of course I do.
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Do I wish I were taller and playing center in the NBA, yes.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I wish I were smarter and had figured it out sooner.
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But I think that we're really coming from as a society is exactly the same place, which is this.
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Our society was based around fossil fuel energy. That's just the truth.
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We all drive cars, we've all grown up in a society where electricity was largely based on fossil fuels.
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It's not a question of that.
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The question is what are we going to do about it, and how fast can we move away from it, and how fast do we have to move away from it?
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So of course I wish that when my good friend Dan Lashof was writing his PhD thesis on climate change in 1989, that I was like Dan's absolutely right.
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We should be really careful about this.
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But it took me longer than, obviously, the sooner the better, but I feel like ten years ago, I came to that conclusion.
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And I decided this is really important, that this is a thing that will be critical for our society and critical for everyone on this planet, so therefore, we can't equivocate about it, wish I'd been smarter.
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>> Could we drill down on that moment a little?
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Because I think there's a very deep amount of thought that you put into this particular issue, and yet, there's so many issues out there in the world.
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And you've spoken about many, you've spoken about inequality, and you've spoken about tobacco, and the harms that it poses to society.
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You've gone through many different topics.
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How is it that climate resonated so deeply?
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And specifically, what you saw at that time ten years ago?
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>> Well, let me give you my thinking then, which is this.
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I mean, I know the GSPS has a ton of foreign born students, but as an American, I felt like our system basically works.
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And the way it basically works is we're rude, we're vulgar, we're loud, we disagree with each other.
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But if everybody's trying to solve the problem, regardless of where they're coming from, we compromise, we solve the problem, we move on.
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And everyone else is thinking they're very rude and loud, which is true, but we compromise and we solve the problem.
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And I looked at climate and I thought my gosh, we're not solving the problem, that we have this huge problem that could be existential for a society.
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And for some reason, the normal American loud conflictual compromise isn't happening here.
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And I felt like I really believe in our system, so I want to get into our system more to try and figure out how I can be part of its normal solution for big problems for us.
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And so, I have changed, actually, my understanding as a result of getting into that question, and diving into that problem specifically.
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It's changed my understanding of how America really works.
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But the reason I did that problem was I though it was existential, and I didn't understand why the normal American, democratic, ugly, messy, loud way wasn't working in that case.
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>> This gives us a really good transition over to your extensive philanthropic work.
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You signed onto the giving pledge in 2010.
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And you've been especially active in environmental causes, especially since that moment that you described where you saw the light, so to speak.
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How did you go about finding the right causes to back?
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>> [LAUGH] By, I mean, it's such a classic thing.
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I think that you learn a lot by doing, and I think that what we've found over time is, hopefully, we're a lot better at what we're doing, as a result of all the things that we did that weren't so smart.
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And, to a large extent, I would say, my understanding of the idea of philanthropy is really different from what I would say is a traditional understanding of philanthropy.
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Because actually, what we've tried to do is to set up operating enterprises in the real world that are hands on to actually affect the kinds of things we're hoping for. It sounds complicated.
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But for instance, we have a community bank where the equity is through a foundation.
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So we can never get the money back.
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So in a way, we've given the money away forever and ever.
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But it's a bank that's FDIC insured.
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It makes loans for economic justice, environmental sustainability, women in minority own businesses.
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So it's got a very specific social thrust done through our capitalist economic system, but with a complete value driven agenda.
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So it's kind of, we're not giving money away to people, we're lending money.
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We need them to pay us back with interest, so we can make more loans to other people, so they can succeed.
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And so that's not, I mean, I've never heard of someone else doing that, or thinking of that as philanthropy.
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In fact, when we suggest to other people that it's a good idea, they look very askance, but we really believe in operating enterprises where people are involved, really in the real world trying to have impact in a big way, and also to show that things are possible.
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>> Is that a strategy that underlies your focus on both the Center and the Tomcat Center here at Stanford?
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I mean, you clearly believe that Stanford has a role to play in your strategy in fighting climate change.
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>> So, one of the things that's true, if you look at climate, and you kind of divide it into what is happening in the real world in terms of the natural world changes, and what's happening in terms of research, and technology, and capability of dealing with the problems or solving the problems.
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And then our willingness to actually solve the problems and use the technology and the techniques that we have I felt as if, and I still feel like, I mean, I love Stanford, Stanford has led revolutions in technology.
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I wanted Stanford to use its broad range of capabilities, to be a leader in this on every scale.
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So from an investment side, a legal side, a technology side, I felt like Stanford has done this in IT, why shouldn't we be doing this in energy?
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There are very few places that have the breadth of research, the sort of capability of across the board making this difference, and making it happen.
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And so, part of the solution to this is our ability to solve it from a technical basis, and then to understand how that fits into society.
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And so, since I love Stanford, and since I knew the capabilities, I felt like I would really like it if Stanford leads on this.
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And if you actually look at what Stanford did on renewing its own electricity plant for the campus, that was, I think, designated the best engineering project in the United States of America in 2015.
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The Stanford electricity system, so that we have the capability of doing this in a way that is significant and replicable, and that's what I wanted to see.
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>> Apparently, we're also pretty good at football.
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[LAUGH] >> Wow, where I goeth before a fall.
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>> [LAUGH] >> We'll pass on the message to David Shaw.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But before we go to national politics, I'd like to focus a bit on your activism here in our own backyard.
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In California, voter ballot initiatives allow the public to vote directly on proposed laws.
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You have focused on these ballot initiatives as a way to influence a wide range of policies, including climate and energy legislation.
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How did you arrive at this particular approach?
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>> So for the people who aren't California citizens, we do have this extremely fat and complicated ballot where you're basically allowed to do direct democracy.
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So if you can get enough signatures raised, you can put a proposition on the ballot that everybody gets to vote on. And if 50.
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1% of the people vote for it, you have a new law.
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And this has led to some truly heinous outcomes, and it's also led to some really good outcomes.
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And so, the first thing that we did, was I co-chaired with George Schultz.
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Fighting a ballot initiative which was designed to get rid of our progressive energy legislation.
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Our cap and trade system, and a bunch of other things that have to do with basically having the most progressive energy laws in the world.
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That was in 2010, two oil companies wanted to basically change those laws and get rid of them.
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And so we were the No on 23 campaign.
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So why did we, we did that because traditionally, when you get to the ballot and it's a question of business versus environmentalist, jobs versus the environment, jobs and business always win.
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And that was the way people thought this was going to happen and there had been a previous ballot initiative in 2006.
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So four years before, where an individual from L.
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A spent 70 million bucks and lost his initiative.
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So there was no one rushing to be the environmental side of this proposition, so it's like most of the jobs I've had.
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There was no one else stupid enough to take it.
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But the difference was, it actually was a formative experience for me because it really was about climate in some ways but we had a rule, no one can talk about climate.
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The way that we're going to talk to people is about local human issues of jobs and clean air.
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And in fact, by far, the best TV commercial we had was a commercial of a woman who was the head in California of the American Lung Association talking about clean air and the American Lung Association so obviously she cared about it.
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She was very credible, a lovely person, came across incredibly well and we got 70% of the vote for people who said basically, we don't want to get rid of our clean air/climate legislation.
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We also found, and I think it was incredibly significant for me, that we wanted a different message which was more jobs, cleaner air.
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But we also wanted a completely different corelation.
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So we spent, we knew that all the people who are traditional environmentalists, of course, would be on our side in terms of groups.
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The NRDC, EDF, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, of course, those people would be for us.
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But actually when you look at the people of California, the number one group who supports everything environmental, everything about progressive energy, everything against climate change, are Latinos.
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Number two group, African Americans, number three group Asian Americans.
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So when we were looking at the people of California for votes, we knew from the beginning we were going to get progressive business and we basically split the chambers of commerce around the state.
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We had at least half the chambers on our side.
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We had organized labor but went to every community group and we wanted to make sure that people understood it.
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Because actually, the people who are not necessarily considered members of the CR club and Mike Brunes once tried to kill me for saying this.
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But people who haven't necessarily been the, what you think of as the fabled environmentalists actually are the environmentalists.
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And that's how we got 70% of the vote because we looked at a completely different slice of Californians, and we said our coalition is much broader and our message is much different.
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And that is something that I learned in that year and it was true then and it's true now.
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>> So these campaigns you've organized on behalf of these clauses are not cheap.
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[LAUGH] California's all ready one of the most expensive media markets in the country and as these things go national, I mean the costs grow almost exponentially.
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What would you say to those who argue that spending massive amounts of money on these types of campaigns actually undermines our democratic process?
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>> There's no question that the money in politics is completely out of control and I would be strongly in favor of changing the rules.
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I completely agree with that, I do think the money in politics is a cancer and it's distorting and has led to some terrible outcomes and continues to.
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You really can't look at this tax bill that's going through the Congress right now and not see that that's exactly what's happening.
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That we have a fight between monied interests and the people of the United States, and the people of the United States are losing badly. No question about it.
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That happens to be the system we have.
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So I could say, you know what, I wish the system were different and until the system is different, I'm going to sit on the sidelines.
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Or I could say, I really think it's important that we keep our clean energy legislation, I really think it's important to close this tax loophole, I really think it's important to stop young people from smoking and just suck it up and spend the money.
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Or I could be pure and say I'm going to keep the money and I'm going to wait until the system is perfect which will be, by the way, never.
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So I do think we should change it.
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I'm completely against Citizens United decision.
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I think it's an absolutely terrible decision for democracy.
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I think it is distorting the way our society is run.
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And I'm completely committed to a change to what I would think of.
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If you look at what we do, I believe the solution to our problems is broader democracy and broader participation and more power to the people of the United States.
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So if you look at what our organization does, we're a grassroots organization.
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Last year, with our partners, we knocked on 12 and a half million doors, we were on 370 college campuses, we registered 807,000 people in the State of California. About 350,000 outside.
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Every one of those was an attempt to get people who are under represented to be registered, engaged, and to participate.
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Because unless you are doing that, your voice isn't heard and you are not going to get a fair shake.
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So, everything we are doing is about broader democracy, more participation by people who are underrepresented so that they will get a fair shake in our democracy.
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And the money side of this, on the other side, is huge and absolutely contrary to every single thing we're doing.
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And in fact, they're fighting their head off to try and prevent Americans from being able to exercise their franchise and to participate fully.
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>> So I'm hearing you say something very interesting which is that, even if Gandhi once said, an eye for an eye will make the world blind, you're essentially telling us well, in this case, two wrongs do make a right.
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That if you want to fight, you have to fight the fight with your own, with whatever you've got on your arsenal. >> No, no, no, no.
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I will not accept that question.
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I am not jabbing anyone's eye out.
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>> [LAUGH] >> That is absolutely unfair.
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I believe what they are doing is anti-democratic And I believe the only thing I'm doing is to try and make the democracy broader, more complete, and more just.
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I don't think this is an eye for an eye.
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I don't think I'm doing anything that is not absolutely positive and in favor of the American system and the American people.
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I'm not doing anything to hurt them.
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All I'm trying to do is have a counterbalance supporting the people of the United States.
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This isn't an eye for an eye.
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This is completely different.
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This is an attempt to protect a system that was set up over 200 years ago, where the idea is everybody is equal, not every dollar is equal, but every person is equal.
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>> So, and I happen, by the way, to support a lot of the causes you back.
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So, understand this comes from a really good place.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Wait, George, trust me.
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If I disagree with you, I intend to.
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>> I'm thinking it would be edifying for people to understand something.
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Which is you've built yourself, occasionally, as the left's answer to the Koch Brothers. >> Never, not one time.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Thank you for saying it.
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Not once, and never will. >> Well, I've read it. >> Someone else has.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I promise, it's never happened.
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Other people ask me if I'm the left answer to the Koch Brothers and I always say no.
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>> All right well, well challenge accepted I guess. >> [LAUGH].
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>> I've been there every time.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, I agree that it's not a fair characterization to compare people like that.
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But I think one thing that I was curious to understand is what do you think the American left, or rather, just progressive causes in general, and those who back them, could learn from the Koch Brothers?
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>> Well, I'll say this, I mean I don't know if you guys, have you guys read Dark Money?
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There's a book about the Koch Brothers essentially, kind of going back through their family history about what they've done from an economic basis and what they've done on a political basis.
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And they have been really consistent.
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They have been pushing on this stuff really for over a century as a family.
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And so, I admire that fact that they have continued to push on the things that they care about over a very long period of time.
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And when you've said that, you've said every single that I appreciate about them.
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>> [LAUGH] We're talking about what can we learn from them.
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And we don't have to appreciate them. >> Be consistent. >> Be consistent. >> Keep trying.
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I think there is no question that our organization, I quit my job five years ago and our organization has been up for approximately five years.
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We're much better today than we were five years ago.
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What we can do in terms of going door to door, what we can do on college campuses.
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Our capability of making change is much better because of the five years that we've spent improving ourselves.
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I mean when we, I thought at Fairlawn, and I think today, when I look back at 2017 I'll say what did we do in 2017? Did it work? Didn't it work?
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I will also ask is our organization stronger at the end of the year than it is at the beginning of the year?
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Because there are lots of things you can do that makes a year be good at the expense of a long term growth of your organization capability.
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And I always feel like you want to have good results and you want to grow your capability.
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And so when I think about what we're trying to do and what I think progressives should be trying to do is be aware of that second part.
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It's a long-term proposition to get this country back on a trajectory of growth and justice.
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And so any one year, any one election is not going to do it, we've always gotta be building capability overtime.
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>> So speaking about building capability, I think it's probably time just to change topics slightly to one that's been in the news recently.
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I believe I've seen a commercial or two regarding your love of President Trump.
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>> [LAUGH] >> If Trump invited you to work on climate change policy at the White House, would you accept?
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>> No, there's absolutely no chance that the president has any interest in seriously working on climate policy.
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Every single thing he's done, in the election and subsequent to the election has been to work against us having progressive, objectively derived energy policies.
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So there is no chance that he would make a good faith effort to have me come and try and come up with a program so that as a country we could move forward in a positive way.
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And I think that the fact that I'm saying that, I deeply regret, I started by saying my belief in the American system is as long as you seed to the other person that they're patriotic, that they're first goal is to help the American people.
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And that they're driven by a belief in data objectivity and analysis.
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That's the American system.
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And if people disagree with you fine, of course they do.
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I mean anyone who's arrogant enough to think they're always right is really ridiculous.
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So the American system is we may disagree but as long as you seed good intentions, then we can work together, and compromise in the middle, and probably come out with something better than either party had at the start of the conversation. That's my basic belief.
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I don't believe for a second that those are the circumstances under which that proposal would be made, and therefore, I wouldn't do it.
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>> So in talking about growing the capability of your organization, how would you say this particular campaign to impeach President Trump grows the capability of your organization over the long term?
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>> So what we're actually doing, which I encourage you to sign onto please, www. needtoimpeach.
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com, is trying to give the American people directly a voice in this conversation.
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And I think it's fair to say, that the Republicans in Washington D. C.
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don't like it and the Democrats in Washington, D. C. also don't like it.
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But the fact of the matter is we have the technology for the American people to act independently and to speak up.
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And the voice of the American people in a democracy is supposed to be dispositive.
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And so what we're trying to do is give Americans an easy way together to raise their voice because we believe that we're actually in danger.
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That every single day the health and safety of American citizens is in danger and that we can't sit by and pretend that its not happening.
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And so when I think about this campaign, I think about it the same way you ask me the questions about the proposition.
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The propositions are there for when the government in Sacramento fails to be able for the people of California to be able to enact laws together.
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And what we're doing with this impeachment petition is to try and give the American people a chance to do just that.
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Even though we can't make laws, we can, in effect, raise our voice and change the conversation and say, there is something desperately wrong here in the United States.
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This is not a partisan appeal.
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This is not to Democrats, or Independents, or Republicans.
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This is to everybody who's worried about the United States of America, and that is what we are trying to do.
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I had a look for the privacy policy on the impeachment campaign, and one of the things it says is that the information that you provide can be used for, essentially, future outreach.
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Is that another objective of this campaign?
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Is that, yes, maybe this campaign raises awareness to some issues, but does it also provide a platform for a really devoted set of followers to be reached out to over the course of your next objectives?
32:29
>> Well I would love it if we can get a way for the American people to have their voice be heard over a long period of time and also to provide a place to basically put out content.
32:48
So as far as I'm concerned, look, we have seen information technology change the way people relate in so many different ways.
33:00
And the capability of Americans, we've seen this all over the world.
33:05
I mean, we have seen politics turned upside-down by the ability of citizens around the world to communicate real time.
33:16
And we've seen it here too, in the election process.
33:20
The question is, is there a way for Americans to come together in a way so that we can actually have our voice be heard when there's something desperately wrong?
33:29
That's what we're trying to do. >> Thank you so much.
33:32
One more question before we turn it over to the audience for Q and A.
33:37
I wanted just to focus back on the GSP student body for a second and ask you.
33:41
If you could be a GSP student again, and we'd be very fortunate to have you in our student body, and wanted to help the environment, where would you go right now, and why? >> As a job? >> Yes, for a career.
33:56
>> Well, I'll say this, I don't think there's one answer to that question.
34:05
I have four kids who are 23, 25, 27, and 29.
34:14
I think that their generation, so for everybody who's sitting here who's in that age range, I think that your generation actually is much more thoughtful about the way that you're thinking about your careers and your lives than the class of 1983 at the business school where basically we would like a job.
34:37
I think people now are much more proactive in thinking about what getting that job will mean and what the implications are down the line, I really do.
34:47
But I think when I look at my four kids, my oldest son is working on basically software to put renewables on the grid.
34:57
My second son is an architecture student who is trying to figure out how to use the mimicry of nature to make better spaces for people to live in.
35:06
My daughter is working at an impact investor trying to get good returns, but also take into account what will mean for the world if you make the investments.
35:15
My youngest son is claims to be about to take the MCATs, and he's working on health policy for a Congressperson from Southern California.
35:26
So my answer is, I don't think there's one answer, I think that as always you should do the things that you love and are thrilled by.
35:35
But I think that when you do them, you should do them with a perspective that you're going to have a lot of impact, more than you think.
35:45
And that the flip side of getting to go to this incredibly elite institution.
35:52
I know people hate hearing that, everyone would like to think, shucks, it's nothing special.
35:58
It's very special, people here get an opportunity to have impact that's absolutely disproportionate.
36:04
And I think you should just be aware, that when you do, you should take responsibility for what you're causing.
36:12
And that is, I don't care what your job is, as long as you're doing that, as long as you're thinking it through, and that your values are reasonable, then you will do good things.
36:25
And I think that is the responsibility of getting all this special stuff, which I'm extremely grateful to have gotten myself.
36:36
It is a massive opportunity, and with the massive opportunity, should come some sense of responsibility that you don't just get to do this for yourself.
36:46
That if you're going to get this special chance in society, that you should be thinking about what that means for your relationship to all the other people in this society who didn't get that special chance.
37:00
And I think you don't do that, I think that would be a profound mistake for someone.
37:05
>> We'll now open it up to questions from the audience.
37:09
We've got some microphones. >> Hi, Dr.
37:17
Van Aken, I'm an MBA One here.
37:20
Question on why impeachment?
37:23
Why not focus on the policy disagreements, raise those issues with the American people?
37:28
It strikes me from a rhetoric perspective that saying the man's an existential threat, he should be removed from office is to now action impact us a bit confusing and potentially dangerous, so thank you. >> So, why impeachment?
37:44
Well, I do think the man's an existential threat, for starters.
37:47
I do think that he's met the standard for impeachment.
37:50
And we're actually going to go through that, I think, in public next week.
37:54
But, I also think, That there is a question in our society, really, about what we're doing and whether we're in crisis.
38:07
So I look at the impeachment question as, are we in crisis?
38:12
And I talked to a friend of mine, and I thought he said something, who runs a very large public company.
38:19
And he said Tom, I have a 3% mortgage, we have 4% unemployment, and the sock market is at a record, how are we in crisis?
38:32
And I said well the markets fluctuate, economies change around.
38:38
But if you look what was going on politically, if you look at what's going on internationally, if you look at what's going on in terms of long term decisions, for the United States of America's, we are in a profound crisis that people are not dealing with.
38:57
And that is the point of impeachment.
39:00
People are saying to me, actually I'm never going to use this when they don't like a tax bill.
39:03
This has nothing to do with a tax bill.
39:06
We are in a profound crisis and the question is when are Americans going to be able, are we going to as a group realize this and understand what's at stake?
39:16
So I actually think that going after the individual bills, all of which I disagree with, every single one of them, is the wrong way to do it.
39:26
That that is something where you're really fighting in DC.
39:30
I don't want to be fighting in DC.
39:32
I don't think it's going to be effective.
39:33
I think it's a waste of time and money.
39:35
What I want to be doing is I want to be talking to people in Des Moines, and Schenectady, and Cleveland, and Dallas, and all across the country, because those are the people who I trust.
39:51
I keep saying the solution for us is going to be a broader democracy, not to go back to Washington DC to beg people to be more thoughtful.
40:02
>> To build on that question a little bit, you've fielded many questions about whether or not this impeachment campaign is setting up a run for governor of California, and I'm not going to repeat that question.
40:13
That talking about whom you're fighting on behalf of.
40:16
I guess I was curious, what would you want potential voters to know about you based on this impeachment campaign? >> About me?
40:22
>> Yes, because you're the one fighting for them.
40:24
>> [LAUGH] Well, I don't think it's about me.
40:28
Let's start by saying this campaign is supposed to be about everybody putting their voice together.
40:32
The only thing I'd really like people to understand is I think that most of the people who interview me ask me what my hidden agenda is.
40:42
And there's an assumption in there that no one would do something because they just thought it was the right thing to do, that there has to be something.
40:50
I remember when I started on climate, people would say to me, but you're doing this to make money on your clean energy investments, right?
40:57
And I'd be like, how does spending tens of millions of dollars that has no response make people richer?
41:04
It's- >> [LAUGH] >> But we actually made sure we made no clean energy investments except through our foundation, so that we could just take that off the table.
41:15
So when I think about this impeachment, my whole point on this is we're trying to do what's right, because we think it's important.
41:22
That's what I want people to think, that's all we want.
41:25
We want Americans to think that there is a possibility to do what's right, and that is what we are pushing for as hard as possible.
41:35
>> Hi, my name's Tyler Willerbram, MBA 1.
41:39
And I'm curious to know, so, investing all this money in technologies for sustainable energy, and trying to influence policies to promote them.
41:49
But people largely ignore the fact that if you just got rid of fossil fuels today, you'd be having thousands of people unemployed all of a sudden across the US.
41:59
And largely this happened in the coal industry, and is definitely a factor that led to the results of this past election.
42:07
So to claim that we need to get to get to sustainable energy as quickly as possible, but ignore this really large fact of doing so could actually result in electing even more in the same potential president.
42:22
What's sort of your response to, what are you doing to actually look at the American workers and people that are going to be voting in these elections to ensure that if we do get to a sustainable energy across the grid, how do we actually make sure that we're not leaving other people behind?
42:44
>> So, that is a great question.
42:47
And before I give my answer, let me apologize for my answer, because I completely disagree with almost everything you said.
42:57
We actually did a study on this.
42:58
So we did a study what happens to employment if we move to clean energy.
43:03
We can't move to clean energy tomorrow.
43:05
It's always going to be a question of pace.
43:09
But we did a study with Hank Paulson, the Republican Secretary of the Treasury under George W Bush, and Mike Bloomberg, who's been a Democrat, a Republican, and is sort of an independent, I guess, to make sure that it wasn't a partisan's fight.
43:24
And it basically showed, that in fact, if we moved to clean energy, it creates more jobs, that we will have higher paying jobs, the United States will grow faster.
43:35
And this isn't taking into account the cost of having the climate change, and the kinds of disasters that are going to cost the United States $300 billion this year.
43:47
But there are a couple true points in what you're saying that are absolutely important politically, and I agree with.
43:54
One of them has to do with what are you going to do with.
43:57
It's true there will be more jobs, and it's true the jobs will be better paying, but not for the same people.
44:03
So the question is, what are you going to do?
44:05
My roommate, my ex-roommate lives in the poorest county in West Virginia.
44:11
His brother-in-law is an unemployed coal miner, and his cousin is an unemployed coal miner.
44:15
So I went down to see him, he's a retired career army officer with some health problems.
44:22
And I went down, and he was telling me, if you're a coal miner today, you make 82 bucks an hour.
44:28
Which, in the poorest county in West Virginia, is an unbelievable amount of money, and the next stop is probably 25 bucks an hour.
44:36
So coal mining is not the world's greatest job.
44:40
It's a really well paid job with good benefits.
44:43
And that's really what we're talking about.
44:45
We're talking about what are we going to do for the people in our society who think, look, there are 50,000 coal miners in the United States of America.
44:55
It's a very, very, very, very small number of people, but there's a broader question here, and that's what Trump was referring to.
45:03
There are a group of people in the United States of America who do not live in Palo Alto, California.
45:08
They do not live in New York City.
45:11
They do not live in the parts of the country that are seeing real growth.
45:16
They are not connected to the information technology revolution.
45:20
They are not connected to the positive aspects of globalization.
45:24
And they can see the climate changing, but for them, that is not the immediate problem they're dealing with.
45:32
That's just something that may put them out of work.
45:35
So they feel completely scared by the fact, all of the fact that the world is changing.
45:41
That people in Palo Alto go like, whoa, just killed it on my latest investment.
45:46
They're going, whoa, the world is changing, and they just closed the plant.
45:50
And there's only one plant, or they just closed the coal mine, and now what do we do?
45:55
But now we're going to get less than half the dollars per hour that we thought we were going to get or that we were getting.
46:01
So the question to me is not the macro question you asked, but the micro question.
46:06
What do we say to the people in rural America or poor urban America who are not connected to the growth for whom the rapid pace of change in our society is scary as anything?
46:19
And that is what Trump was dealing with, that fear, that uncertainty, and that sense that no one was listening.
46:28
And I think his answer was a dishonest one.
46:31
And I think it was absolutely, we're not going back to a lot of coal miners.
46:38
Even if we dug a ton more coal, it's all mechanized.
46:40
No one is going into a coal face with a pick and shovel anymore, period.
46:45
But it was a perfect symbol for going back to a time when being a hard working American who was willing to go to work every day and kill yourself meant you got a middle class job, including in rural America.
47:00
So the question is when we talk to those people who are hard working and scared, how are we actually, not how are we going to fake it, how are we actually going to include them?
47:10
And to me, the question is two-fold.
47:12
One is, we need to invest in the people of the United States.
47:16
That means education, training.
47:18
We need to connect them to this world that you guys are in right here in this auditorium.
47:24
If you don't have broadband in the community, you cannot compete in the first world.
47:30
When I was in West Virginia, the roads were bad, literally.
47:35
So the question is, if you're in that community, how can you possibly compete in this world or even be part of this world?
47:43
And this includes rural California.
47:46
If you're not connected real-time, it can't happen.
47:49
Secondly, if we're not investing in those people, we lose, they lose, the country loses.
47:54
The idea that we're going to cut education, training, healthcare, food for poor kids from the budget is insane.
48:05
It's morally wrong, but it's also crazy.
48:08
This country will do well if Americans do well.
48:11
We should be taking our money and investing in those people.
48:14
So that they think I'm going to be connected to the world, I'm going to be trained for the world.
48:19
I'm going to participate in this world, in the 21st century, so that every change doesn't actually push me further away from what's going on in the real world.
48:29
Because if we were in rural Wisconsin, and there was one plant in our town, and that plant closed, we wouldn't know what to do either, except leave.
48:43
That's what's going on in this world.
48:44
We need to invest and frankly, clean energy, it means rebuilding this country, and it actually means this country with millions of net new jobs. We have to do it.
48:57
It's a way for us in the short-term to get every community rural, poor urban people.
49:04
People in rural America, we have to do it every where.
49:07
It's good jobs every where.
49:08
The question is, what do the jobs pay and who gets them?
49:12
The last thing I'll say is this, I was in Cleveland talking to some inner city ministers about clean energy jobs, and they were excited, I promise you, at the idea that we could bring thousands of jobs to urban, poor Cleveland with high unemployment for their people, in their communities.
49:35
It's true in rural Wisconsin too.
49:37
So when I hear it I know he's talking, the president was dealing with a real emotional problem that is absolutely felt in this country but he wasn't giving a fair answer.
49:49
And the answer I'm giving about invest in Americans, rebuild the country and connect us all together, is actually the way that somebody living in a rural part of this country can connect with you guys in this room.
50:01
Or you can choose to live in a rural part of California and still connect with the fastest growing, most vibrant companies in the world.
50:06
>> We are almost out of time, so I'm just going to take the final question, so we can wrap up, so officially according to the clock.
50:18
But the holidays are right around the corner, and I've read that you are known for requiring guests at your annual Christmas lunch to bring a poem to read.
50:28
What's the best poem you've heard?
50:33
Well, I would say there are some great American poets right now.
50:42
The two that I would recommend to you if you're not reading your poetry every night before bed, Billy Collins is hilarious and really profound and Mary Oliver is fantastic and super fun.
50:58
And wow, if you read just those two poets, they are, I promise you, you will laugh really hard and you will walk away happier, and with a sense of some, the world being a place where we can all make it better.
51:18
We can have a positive impact.
51:20
And that's what we're all trying, the one thing I would say to you guys is, look, having a meaningful life is what you should be going for.
51:28
That is what will make you happy.
51:30
If you sit there and think I'm having a positive impact.
51:35
I'm having a meaningful life.
51:37
That is what you will want when you're my age.
51:40
And so when people say you're really trying to do this to make more money, I'm like no, selfishly I'm trying to have a positive impact.
51:46
I'm not trying to say it's not selfish.
51:48
But that's what, I promise you guys, if you're doing that, you will find great joy in that, and that's what I've observed in myself and all the people who I meet.
51:57
>> Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking Tom. >> [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]