Brainstorm Bits - Doerr on Going Green

"Leading the world into a green economy should be our generation's moonshot"

I tend to agree with John on this but I am going to post my friend Steve's view on this which is 180 degrees away from John's.

I'll try to do that today

Comments

[Charlie Wood]

Sadly, this generation's moonshot may turn out to have been the Iraq war.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program), the entire Apollo program cost $135 billion in 2006 dollars. One estimate (http://costofwar.com/) puts the cost of the war in Iraq--so far--at $291 billion. The Congressional Budget Office says the price tag may hit $600 billion by 2010 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p01s03-usmi.html).

Quite a legacy.

[steve]

"moonshot"?

by that i assume mr. doerr means a wildly expensive, spectacular propaganda initiative with little or no practical or residual value, only a massively expensive, lethargic bureacracy, which is riddled with political patronage and questionable science and engineering, yet which even in the face of repeated failure and occasional disaster, is impossible to kill...?

[steve]

btw, not to give the wrong impression, i am a huge fan of space exploration, particularly manned space exploration. (i'm a card carrying member of The Planetary Society and urge all to join at planetary.org)

i'm just amused that someone as presumably knowledgable and thoughtful as doerr would pick such a lousy metaphor.

instead, how about "Leading the world into a green economy should be our generation's Marshall Plan"? Or "Leading the world into a green economy should be our generation's Tennesse valley Authority"? Something that invokes not huge symbolism and polotics, but huge shared effort... and huge shared benefit...

[Scott]

Very interested in your thoughts on this subject. I have been advocating on my blog for some time that the time to invest in a new green economy is now, before we cede leadership to others.

http://greenskeptic.blogspot.com/2006/04/my-10-thoughts-for-earth-day.html

[dave davison]

John Doerr has a sterling record as one of the top VCs in Silicon Valley as he and his partners have built the powerful KPCB keiretsu over the past two decades.

AS an early investor who funded google, John sits on the google board of directors, and I believe has played a significant role in the attraction of Dr.Larry Brilliant to head up google.org - the founder's venture philanthropy arm.

As Dr.Brilliant noted in a recent interview with Wired " I'm going to approach this the way a venture capitalist would - map out the industry to see where the gaps are. You fund the initiative, learn what works and ask "Will it Scale"?...It may be that the only way to deal with these pressing globel issues such as climate change is to create an industry or build companies"

I think including google.org in the KPCB green initiative Keiretsu is a "brilliant" way to engage with green deals that can scale and have the opportunity to prove their concepts in startup mode with help from google.org.

The green initiative at KPCB engages 9 of the firm's partners and is likely to increase the size of its greem fund from the current $100 Million to $150 Millon soon.

I wouldn't be a "greenskeptic" about this serious move by KPCB into new portfolio territory. - I'd bet on it.