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The billionaire venture capitalist said climate renewal and sustainability would be the “new” thing.
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By David Geles
David Gelles writes about climate change and business and has interviewed many CEOs in recent years.
John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley history, is donating $1. 1 billion to Stanford University to fund a school focused on climate renewal and sustainability.
The donation, which Doerr made with his wife Ann, is the largest ever made to a university for the status quo of a new school, and is the largest donation of the moment to an educational institution, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Only the $1. 8 Michael R. Bloomberg’s billion donation in 2018 at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, ranks higher.
The grant establishes the Doerrs as the number one funders of climate replacement studies and grants, and will position Stanford in the midst of public and personal efforts to steer the world away from fossil fuels.
“Climate and sustainability are going to be the new computer science,” Mr. Doerr, who amassed his estimated fortune of $11. 3 billion by making an investment in tech corporations like Slack, Google and Amazon, said in an interview. “This is what young people need to keep painting in their lives, for the right reasons. “
The school, known as the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, will house classic educational departments similar to topics such as planetary science, energy technology, and food and water security. It will also have several interdisciplinary institutes and a center focused on policy practice and technological responses to the climate crisis.
“The school will surely address political issues and ask what it would take to move the world toward more sustainable practices and better behaviors,” Marc Tessier-Lavigne, stanford president, said in an interview.
Doerr joins a developing list of ultra-rich men who donate huge sums of cash to fight global warming. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in 2020 that he committed $10 billion of his own cash to a new initiative he called the Bezos Earth Fund, and last year detailed how some of the cash would be spent.
Mr. Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor, said in 2019 that he would spend $500 million to help close coal-fired power plants. And Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has poured billions of dollars into paintings on climate-related issues through efforts, adding Breakvia Energy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
However, some believe that such philanthropic investments can make all the difference in the event of a global crisis.
“I don’t see how giving a billion dollars to a rich university will make things happen anytime soon,” said David Callahan of “The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Golden Age. “It’s smart that you’re getting rid of your money, yet those billions of dollars can be spent more looking to increase this in public opinion. Until the public sees this as a major problem, politicians will not act.
Arun Majumdar, who appointed the school’s inaugural dean and pleaded with the Obama and Biden administrations on power issues, said the school would provide context and research on climate issues but avoid it before the defense. “We will not enter the political arena,” he said. It’s a very slippery slope for us. “
Majumdar, who recently holds a professorship at Stanford called Jay Precourt, a businessman who has made a name for himself in the oil industry, also said the new school would work with and settle for donations from fossil fuel companies.
A blank energy investment. Billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg reported a $242 million effort to advertise blank energy in emerging countries. It will fund systems in Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey and Vietnam.
Hurricanes and air pollutants. A new one has found that air pollutant particles have a significant effect on the frequency of hurricanes. Over the past four decades, the decline in air pollutants in North America and Europe has been linked to an increase in the number of hurricanes; the accumulation of pollutants in developing economies has had the opposite effect.
Oilfield sales. Many of the world’s largest electric corporations are expected to sell oil fields and other polluting assets worth more than $100 billion in a bid to reduce their emissions. But a new study found that those deals involve buyers who have made little or no commitment to taking on climate change.
Extreme warmth. A heat wave has hit India and Pakistan for weeks and is expected to intensify. Scorching weather is a reminder of what lies ahead, as heat waves are more frequent, more damaging, and more durable.
Warming of the oceans. A new study has found that if fossil fuel emissions continue, warming waters could lead to the loss of ocean species by the year 2300, which is in line with the five mass extinctions of Earth’s past. risks, the researchers found.
“Not all oil and fuel industries agree, yet some are under pressure to diversify, otherwise they might not survive,” he said. Majumdar. ” Those who need to diversify and be part of the solutions, and need to have interaction with us, we are open to that. “
Doerr said he was first encouraged to fight climate substitution in 2006, after watching Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” with his family. He said that at dinner after the movie, his daughter told him, “Your generation created this problem. You’d better fix it. The following year, Mr. Gore joined Kleiner Perkins, Mr. Doerr.
In the following years, Kleiner Perkins made several major investments in blank energy companies and M. Doerr gave a TED statement titled “Salvation (and Profits) in Greentech. “But the 2008 financial crisis, when the herbal fuel rate fell due to hydraulic fracturing, many of those blank electric corporations went bankrupt.
Last year, Mr. Doerr an e-book called “Speed. “
“We want to be transparent about the challenge,” he said. This is a challenge of scale that requires much more ambition, urgency and excellence deployed in front of it. “
Mr. Doerr and his wife are signatories to the Giving Pledge, the effort founded by Mr. Gates, his ex-wife Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett to convince other ultra-wealthy people to give most of their fortune in their lives or in their lives. lives. wills. ” Climate and sustainability are the vital maxim of our causes,” Mr. Doerr said of his family’s philanthropic projects.
Other elementary universities, in addition to Columbia, are also creating interdisciplinary schools focused on climate change. However, the Doerr School for Sustainability, Stanford’s first new school in 70 years, will be among the largest and most productive funded. It will be presented with 90 university members and will rise 60 over the next 10 years. The university said it had raised another $590 million along with Doerr’s donation and that part of the budget would be used to construct two new buildings.
Doerr said he hoped the gift would motivate other wealthy people to spend their fortunes to combat climate change. “It will take more than one institution,” Doerr said. “Just like we have medical schools, we want sustainability schools to do the work. “
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