Jim McDermott - Clean Energy Pioneer | Why Smart Entrepreneurs Are Betting Everything on Climate Solutions

You have to look at the consumption of electricity, whether it's crypto or large language models, how much economic value are they producing? Large portion of crypto, I don't think they create enough economic benefit to justify why they electricity that they consume. He doesn't chase trends, he builds the future quietly, deliberately, and with a mission. Jim McDermott is the mine behind over 25 companies from stamps.com, which he took public to ground breaking climate tech ventures that were acquired by giants like LG Kim and Occidental. You need to go solve as an entrepreneur at the problem that you find most interesting. I think that climate is the single greatest economic opportunity the next 50 years. And this is one of the things that's really important about climate is there's a lot of people who in the discussion are like, well, it's either wind and solar, which is zero emission, or it's natural gas, which is emissions. That's not true. You can make a natural gas power plant that emits no CO2, it just costs more money. He's not just a founder, he's an architect of sustainability. Launching startups before the world realized how much they need them. Jim's work sits at the intersection of deep science, serious capital, and real world impact. Most people talk about saving the planet. He's out here building the tools to do it. Find people who are good at taking technologies, deploying them and building them into real businesses. Invest with them. The true mark of success is not whether or not you get something right. It's what you do when you get knocked down. Jim, I find your background very interesting because obviously one of the larger companies that you're known for is founding SAMHPS.com. You were an entrepreneur during the first.com boom. And now you work with climate and climate tech companies. And I'm curious about the through line between those two ventures or between those two ideas. So what connects sort of the old Jim and the .com entrepreneur Jim to climate and what you do now? Yeah, it's a great question. I'd buy my picture, have me on. Yeah, I think that the three lines for it frankly is energy. I started off my career in New York. I was working actually for a bank first boss in there and I was in what was then called energy and infrastructure. So we built freeways, tollways, large power plants, things like that. So I actually started off financing coal and natural gas power plants. And so if you want to think about it sort of as a continuum, what ended up happening was essentially that I started off making electrons. And electrons ultimately are the basis of all compute and compute is what makes the internet what it is. And so when I ended up starting SAMHPS.com while I was still in graduate school, it was one I was really interested in postage and I'd been doing a lot of other interesting things. But but I think the through line was that when we went to go do the first installation of our servers, we went to a place called Exodus Communications in Irvine, California, this is 1998, I think, 1998, 1999. And I was standing in this room and there were racks and racks and racks of these were then I think compact PCs or maybe Dell early Dell machines. But there was an enormous amount of heat coming off these things as well as an enormous, you know, the the the the amperage that it was pulling was just enormous. And I was standing there thinking to myself, this is all very exciting. We're going to put this thing on the this new thing called the internet. But where does all this electricity come from? And if and if the future is all everything is going to be using computers or we're going to have the internet there's going to be all these problems. You know, all these things are going to happen. What happens upstream of all of that? And and because of sort of happenstance and what not I'd been working to build, you know, build the power plants that deliver all the electrons to the data centers. And it hit me very hard. I was like, wow, if we're going to have racks and racks and racks of PCs all over the globe connecting everything and everyone communicating all the time, the upstream implication in terms of pollution. And in this case, it was predicting from coal plants and from gas plants. And the rule of thumb then and now is that every megawatt hour of power generated using coal plants puts one ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. And every megawatt hour for an after gas power plant is a half a ton. And so I was running these numbers in the back of my head about my gosh, like the amount of pollution that's going to go up as a result of all this new demand is going to be profound and at some level unsustainable. And my partner, and I brought this up with my partner. And he was like, look, stop, you know, stop with that. We're we're putting posters on the internet. I don't like, I don't care about that, you know, focus. But it frankly was just sort of this kernel that was like, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was like, everybody's using the compute and it makes our lives better and more interesting and exciting and it's collaborative and all these other wonderful things. But there's a downside to all of this that the general public I think is unaware of. And if they were, they might be more concerned. And that basically flows through to today. I know I was going to say, I think that so a couple points. First of all, that's interesting because 1998 was still very early days, internet, subjectively compared to what we have now. And now if I think fast forward, if I think about this, the companies that are enormous, the, you know, the chat GPTs of the world are all the, I've heard this argument with Bitcoin and all the mining that goes on. If you were concerned about that in 1998, I would be interested to understand your concerns in 2025, given the fact that the, the size of scale, the scope of internet companies is just enormous compared to 98. That being said, I also think that what your partner said is that not, I think that's the general sentiment of most entrepreneurs that are trying to build something that I listen to it hard enough. I can't solve all the world's problems when I'm just getting this company started. I have to focus on, you know, paying rent and getting this thing off the ground. So I think that we'll talk about, we'll talk about what this means for the average person. But I want to frame the problem and sort of show the seriousness of it because again, 1998, you had an idea just because of your background, what, what the problem was or what it was going to be. What does this mean in 2025? And I know there's a lot of other factors outside of just tech companies that contribute to this, but the two that I just mentioned, like cryptocurrency and AI, which seems to take massive amounts of compute, plus all the other companies and all the other startups and all the other things coming out of SF and Y-combinator and everywhere else around the world. What does that mean in 2025? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think depending on how you look at it, right, you can take a very, very, you know, dour, sort of terrible view, which is, oh my gosh, that just means we're consuming more electrons and more electrons means more pollution. And we're not doing anything about it and things are sort of spiraling out of control. I think the more positive thing, or at least the way I tend to think about it in frame, it is, you know, the history of humanity is sort of a race between progress and disaster, right? And I think when I look at chat GPT or I think I look at large language models and sort of what they do and, and the, and the impact that they have, I actually, I take sort of a positive view in that we are, there's, unquestionably, we are consuming more, you know, fossil fuels to do compute. Like, and, and by the way, they're going to be more of that. You see it across, I mean, a joke that for 25 years, it was uncool to be in the power business and know anything about the power business in the last 18 months. I'm like the coolest guy I know, because power plant building is back and all this stuff that was boring, people are like, wow, you know, and I happen to know something about that. But what I would say is that I think crypto, I mean, well, separate crypto from, from, from large language models. I think large language models are profound in that, yes, they consume more electricity and they need a lot more of compute power. But the rate at which innovation, and this is directly related to companies that I'm invested in, that it affords people with domain expertise, particularly like I own a company, I'm an investor in a company called Avnos, which is one of the fastest growing direct bear capture companies in the world, the rate at which the company has been able to innovate and find different, different, more effective chemical pathways using large language models has cut, you know, has cut years off the development cycle. So if that company can ultimately get to market quicker and be able to remove CO2, you know, years or decades sooner, the fact that large language models are consuming more electricity, I think can be offset. So you have to look at the consumption of electricity, whether it's crypto or large language models or other forms of compute, or really, in my mind is like, how much economic value are they producing? I would tell you that I think a large portion of crypto, particularly like mean points and things of that nature, I don't, I don't think they create enough economic benefit to justify a lot of why they, the electricity that they consume. I happen to think that Bitcoin as an example may actually, there may be an argument that says a stored value, like similar to gold, but I think every single one of these things, you have to look at them and say, what economic value, you know, are they creating and what benefit? Because life is never, you know, you just consume electrons and you get nothing, it's, you consume it, something is produced, some values produced, and in some cases that value is extraordinarily high in other cases, it's low. So I'm not as pessimistic, I think, as some people, in the sense that we have there's more CO2 in the atmosphere, that is definitely causing positive feedback loops, right, which are accelerating feedback loops, but I think there's a pathway to use that same technology to innovate at a rate that's potentially faster than the rate of degradation. Another thing that I find very interesting, so again, you had that conversation with your partner when you were first starting out, and again, I do believe that that's what the majority of young entrepreneurs, that's the sentiment they have, but we can talk about, you know, what should entrepreneurs focus on, should there be more purpose driven entrepreneurs, building business hard enough, how do you, how do you build a business in environment and tech and clean tech versus building a business for a consumer? That's an interesting point, but I'm also, you'd mention something that I think ties back to this idea, because after stamps.com, you exited the internet, quote unquote, exited the internet, because you think the problems weren't fundamental enough. So obviously, your view of problems, when you started stamps.com versus when you exited word different, what do you mean by the problems weren't fundamental enough? Because I think that most entrepreneurs, again, that's why they start internet companies, because they do think that they're solving fundamental enough problems. Right. Right. And let me, let me start by saying I could address part of your question, and then I'll get into the exiting part. I, I don't think that everyone has to spend their lives thinking about climate. I don't, I don't think, I actually don't think that produces a society that's worth anything, right? You need to, you need to go solve as an entrepreneur at the problem that you find most interesting, right? My dad used to always tell me that the success is the intersection of, you know, that which you're good at, that which you'll, you know, people will pay you to do, and that which you love to do, right? And, and I think a lot of times, so, so when people talk about the climate, like if climate is not something that's fundamentally interesting to you, or you're not fundamentally good at it, you probably shouldn't do it, right? And that means that there are going to be people who do all sorts of things using the internet that I don't find interesting, but it doesn't mean they can't do them and be successful entrepreneurs and have a role to play. So I, I think that this idea of like that everyone has to have a climate overlay, you know, I mean, somebody's got to design shoes and fashion and make movies like, you know, because I consume that sort of stuff and I like it. So I don't, I think it's a little, it's sort of a species argument to say that everyone must be a climate entrepreneur. I don't really buy that. Now, for me, I mean, I, part of the, part of the reason I was really interested is I've always been interested in fundamental systems. I actually started off college as a, as a physics and philosophy major, which are sort of, if you take the two bookends, right? And STEM, I believe physics is sort of where the, where the road, you know, you go, that's about as far down the road as you can go and philosophy is the other end of that in, in what I've characterized as liberal arts. So I've always been interested in sort of like, where, what's the end of the road look like? And so for me, once the internet, I mean, I was fascinated by the internet because of all, you know, like, all the switching and the gear and like, you know, how do we connect all this stuff up? And, and stamps was an interesting play in that it was a, you know, it was a government license so I felt like it had a competitive advantage and there were not, but other things. But once it was done, I realized, you know, it's a utility and people need postage and I stopped harming anyone. But it's not really solving anybody's problem. I mean, in the sense, you don't have to go to the post office and that's why I started it. But I was much more interested in, in sort of more fundamental problems like global pollution and things of that nature. And so when I started to see where the internet was headed, which was social networking, I actually, I mean, I built a company called Spoke that was 18 months before LinkedIn existed. I launched this thing and I, I mean, so it was pretty obvious at the time what was going on. But I just couldn't make myself feel that it was really solving, I mean, the social networking problem was something for Jim McDermott. Doesn't mean, you know, reading all the crew went on to make billions and God bless him. I used LinkedIn all the time, but I didn't care enough about it. And so the reason I left was I didn't feel like the problem of social networking, which is basically graphing, you know, figuring out the highest probability across a graph is it's an interesting intellectual problem. I just didn't care about it. And so I was like, I'm much more interested in trying to address something that's further upstream than social networking. So I turned and went back towards sort of power plants, fuel, I mean, stationary power generation, clean fuels and energy infrastructure, because I thought that's an area where I have, you know, knowledge, I care about it. And I think I can get paid to do it. So I'm going to go solve that problem. And I think it's important in for every entrepreneur to feel the meaning of it. Right? I mean, I believe that. And meaning oftentimes, I think people, they let other people put an overlay on it for them, right? They're like, well, that, you know, you want to whatever design skateboards and your parents tell you no. And but you really, if it has meaning for you, you should go do it and never mind what your parents think or what other people think. And so it was purely an individual's decision in that I felt that trying to fix XSEO2 and the atmosphere was a was a problem set worth trying to solve. I completely agree with you that, I mean, that's a much more fundamental. It's a huge problem. It's a beautiful idea to say, hey, this is a problem I'm going to solve. It's going to not just impact the consumer and their ability to sort of save a couple of seconds off or a couple of minutes off a day, but not having to a post office, but now I'm going to, you know, it does have 93% market share, which is kind of true. It does. It's like, that's a, that's a, it's a legit monopoly, which I always like, I was kind of, thought was cool. But to the same token, it's such a big problem that it's hard to wrap your mind around how you can even have an impact. And I think that could also be slightly demoralizing for an entrepreneur, like an entrepreneur wants to define a tab. And, and I know that when you, you know, the Stanford School of Thought is like, is the problem big enough to affect billions of people? And not everybody has that school of thought when it comes to entrepreneurship. Some people just want to cash flow and quit at nine to five. And they just want to make a little bit more money and, you know, afford themselves a nice lifestyle. But you just didn't go to the Stanford. How do I disrupt billions of life? You literally went to the peak of the mountain and you said, I want to save the world to a degree, not to, not to, not to joke around with what the goal is, but that's basically where you're heading. How do you even conceptualize the first step when you're solving such a massive problem? Because that's enormous. You could build a company, you could almost even say, you know what? I don't even understand how I can impact this. This is a government's problem. You could say that easily. So where do you start? So it's actually interesting, the way that I've always started. I actually learned this actually from one of my, one of my, I was actually a physics professor a long time ago was start by doing a systems level analysis. Like what does the end and system look like and then map out all the component parts and then determine, you know, and then then do a secondary analysis, which is what should the system look like? So this is how the system operates today in an idealized world. How would it, how would it look? Then look at the discrepancies between the two and determine, you know, are there places where there, you know, companies that don't exist or products, companies, opportunities? Or are there places where they already existed? They can be improved and then start to basically drill in from there. So you say, like you know, you say, okay, it starts with mining coal and then with somebody working on their computer. Let's look at all of the sectors. So there you, okay, well, you know, PCs, Michael Dulles got that one covered. We're not going to, you know, thank you very much. We'll move on. You know, oh, switching gear, Cisco, those guys are running everything and you just keep looking for a spot. And what I realized, one of them was that the, the opportunity to build wind and solar, which were an alternative form of, you know, of producing electrons that are zero, zero emission, was a really interesting place. There was lots of companies and there was a need for developers, like people who'd actually go out and put the projects together, get them financed, get the permitting done, all the rest of that. And so what we did is we just systematically went through and looked at where can we find that? And we defined, and the good news is, it's got to say almost every one of those Tams is gigantic. So you don't, you're like, oh yeah, like electricity, like that's a big one, right? You know, water, that's a big one. And so what we did then is because you're right, like if you simply say, like I'm going to save the world, like that's a frankly, it's a fool's errand, right? You're not going to do it. What you have to do is you have to pick a, I mean, that's the macro thought, right? The micro thought is what's the firm? And then you apply all the basic things that you apply in any entrepreneurial situation, which is, okay, what's needed? What skillsets do I have? What skillsets am I going to have to go buy or rent? Is there, you know, is there an intellectual property position that I can obtain either through licensing or invention? You know, how much money is it going to take to get me there to the next proof point? And, and, and again, that's a, that's a, that part of it is entrepreneurial is applicable. I don't know what you're doing, whether it's not on bubblegum or you're trying to, you know, remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And so what we did was just do a systems, systems level analysis, look at the idealized system, look at the actual system and then start looking for gaps and find companies or find companies or ideas or problems that needed to be solved that had a tam that was large enough to go after. And this is where, this is where you came up with this, I mean, was this the first version of of what you're doing now where you came up with the idea that CO2 isn't just waste, but it's valuable? Yes, well, so the first, the first test was to simply, or the first sort of incarnation was I started in really 2003. I started a firm called the US Renewables Group. And the idea was, look, whenever there's a, there's a structural change in technology, the first thing that happens is the infrastructure, right? And this is exactly, first you build the rail road lines, first you'd lay down the internet infrastructure, then you build the software layer on top of it, right? So until Cisco, like when the internet started, right? Everybody's like, oh, we're going to have all this great stuff. Well, everybody had a, had a, you know, a, you know, eight, eight, broad K hook up and only half the people have them. So the idea of delivering streaming TV, not a thing. And so you had to watch as first the dial up guys got rolled up, then Cisco laid the T3 fiber. And then and only then can you have net Netflix, right? So when you overlay that type of understanding on the, we'll call it the clean infrastructure, which you realize the first thing that was going to have to happen is there was going to have to be a lot of lower carbon fuel. So that was ethanol, biodiesel, sort of lower emissions per unit per kilojoule of energy and wind and solar. And so we started there. We said, let's be infrastructure players that the idea of removing CO2 from the atmosphere came later because one of the things that I realized was that as I was building all this stuff and we were looking at the build rates, which were getting faster and faster and bigger and bigger, but you were looking at the rate at which CO2 was going to the atmosphere became apparent to me that we weren't going fast enough to deal with the legacy. And the way to think about that, is that if you take, there's 420 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere today. We're putting about three per three parts per million every year of new, so incremental. So and we started at 180 when the industrial revolution started. So if you take 420 minus 180, right, you basically have 160 ppm that is legacy and you have 3 ppm, which is new. And what that leads you to is the vast majority of the problem with climate is the CO2 that's already in the atmosphere as a result of the last 150 years of industrialization. And once you realize that, you're like, okay, it's important to continue to decarbonize, but that's going to take a while, right? And now we have this new growth factor with, you know, AI and Bitcoin all the rest of that. But we have a legacy problem of all of the CO2 that was, you know, for all the steel and the railroads and the aerospace age and all the rest that we're all paying for in some format. And so once I realize that that, and candidly, that is the, that is, I think, ultimately, it may well be the domain of government, right? That the government may need to play a significant role in cleaning that up because everyone looks at it and says, well, I didn't do that. Look, I didn't put all that CO2 up, but the reality is we're all dealing with it, right? And so oftentimes when you have sort of shared common problems, right? That ends up being the, the domain of government, but the private sector has to deliver the technical solutions. And so I'm focused on the technical solutions. NetSuite is a success story partner. Now business is brutal right now. tariffs are crushing margins, supply chains are breaking and cash flow. It is strangling companies every single day. And if you can't see what's coming and pivot fast, you're dead in the water. Now here's what separates winners from losers. Total visibility. NetSuite by Oracle gives you X-ray vision into every corner of your business from global shipments to tariff impacts to real time cash flow over 42,000 businesses trust this AI powered system because it works. NetSuite is the number one cloud ERP for a reason. It puts accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one powerful suite. No more data silos, no more guessing. Just one source of truth that lets you make lightning fast decisions while AI automates the busy work. If I had need for this kind of product, I would use NetSuite. One system, full control, tame the chaos with NetSuite. And if your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook, navigating global trade three insights for leaders. That's NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. Indeed is a success story partner. Now say you just realized your business needed to hire someone fast. How can you find amazing candidates fast? It's easy. Just use indeed. When it comes to hiring, indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed, sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire fast. And with sponsor jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to indeed data, sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Plus, with indeed sponsor jobs, there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility. Just go to indeed.com slash Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Clary, the terms and conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need. I think that that listen, I'm not, I'm not nearly as involved or understanding of climate discourse as you are because you live in this space. But it seems like, it seems like the conversation around climate, it's like, it turns into like a political weapon. Yes. And when things turn into political weapons, that means that they're being used for votes or not being actioned against, according to the actual severity of the problem. They're just being used to sway a person this way or that way towards who should I vote for. So, where do we stand now in the climate conversation? I mean, we just switched administrations. What is the, what is the prevailing view on dealing with legacy problems, dealing with this going into the future? Because private industry is going to be private industry. They're going to, this is so, they're going to separate themselves from the government, they're going to be building regardless. But in 2025, what does the government believe about legacy CO2, future CO2 CO2 in the atmosphere, the impact it has? Because I feel like that shouldn't be a political talking point. It should be something that we should be trying to collectively work together to solve. But objectively, it doesn't feel like that's the case. Yes. So, I think, again, I think you got to, you have to tread lightly when you talk about these things because there are lots of places where it is sort of politically charged and people, you know, and politics exists and people do it. But I think the way to think about it is that there are a number of companies and surprisingly, actually many of them are in the oil and gas sector who, if you think about CO2, right, you think about gases and you think about what's under the ground, and things like that, who knows the most about that? Well, the reality is the global oil and gas industry does. And so, they're keenly aware, and there's lots and lots of very smart people in the oil and gas industry in chemical engineering, petrochemical engineering, subsurface geology, who understand these problems quite well. In fact, I would argue in many respects better than a lot of the people, some of the people on the climate side of it, if you will. And it's because they deal with it every day and they have for 100 years. So, all of them, in my conversations with them, almost all of them understand that this is a problem, but they view it like the way that you deal with NOx or SOX or sort of low-Earth Paralutins. It's another gas. It turns out that in excess, you know, in large amounts, it's dangerous and it needs to be managed. They don't have a view that we should never use hydrocarbons again, which some people who are on sort of the further left end of the liberal spectrum sort of have this view of, you know, hey, we can't have any of this. And I think the way that the way that the conversation can be useful is to take a scientific approach and say, like, look, you know, let's, again, let's look at the system, let's look at where the system started, let's look at where it is, maybe let's try to think about idealize things, and then let's view CO2 and the infrastructure that will need to be built to deliver or move or repurpose that as an economic opportunity and work from there. And there are lots and lots of large corporations globally that have made and are continuing to make significant investments in management of CO2. That's the reduction of the primary source, finding ways to capture source that's in the ambient atmosphere, and then ways to repurpose it. So although, and I'll tell you, like the current administration has a much, I think, their view is natural gas is a better answer than say, wind and solar, or at least the president's view of that is, I think he's been very clear on that point. I think when you talk to people in industry who are thinking about how to run their businesses for 20, 30 years forward, all of them have the view that CO2 is, is a real, right? The amounts of it are significant and detrimental. And see, you can invest against that thesis, right? You can find ways to make money and manage the problem. And so I think that there actually is sort of this funny disconnect in the moment in that I think a lot of this discussion, the public discourse around CO2 has been very politicized. Like, basically, if you believe in CO2, then you're a leftist, you know, calling us to this disco, and if you don't, then you're a freedom loving, you know, whatever the nomenclatures are, right? I don't really describe to either one of them because I look at it, and I'm like, there's both an opportune economic, I tell people all the time, I think that climate is the single greatest economic opportunity the next 50 years. And I think, frankly, large language models and compute will be the tool through which we make the discoveries around these topics. So I think that although the government, maybe at this point, is sort of more right of center or, you know, further right than they were whatever five months ago, four months ago, industry has taken a very long-term view on this and continues to do that. And they're continuing to invest to find, and this is oil and gas companies. I mean, one of the things I think it's really important to highlight if you care about climate is that the oil and gas community knows a lot. They have a lot to add, and the idea that you would, you know, whatever name and shame them or engage in that type of stuff is counterproductive, and should be, you should think of them as a partner who can help you, and while maybe it's also true that in the past, they were anti-your climate beliefs. These days, they're actually moving pretty aggressively, and I'm invested in companies that work with them and all the rest. So I think it's a more nuanced answer is maybe what I'd say. Well, first of all, I agree with you. I think it's always a more nuanced answer. It's never oversimplified, and it is interesting to understand that some of the quote-unquote legacy companies are probably leading the charge on trying to figure this out, and probably for themselves too, because if you're a smart executive at a company that's been around for 100 years, you're not stupid. You do know that things will eventually change, so you have two options, right? And it's so cliche, but you can either be blockbuster or Netflix. You can choose at the end of the day who you want to be, and most would rather be Netflix. Most would rather disrupt themselves before they get disrupted by someone else. You know, to start to interrupt, the probably the best example of this that I can give you is I believe that Vicki Hull at Occidental. I was on the board of a company called Carbon Engineering, which is up in actually in Canada that was run by a professor named David Keith that's basically the leading director of capture coming in the world. They came in, invested, ultimately bought the company from us for 1.6 billion, and then I had a joint venture with her called 1.5, which is now the largest director of capture company in the world that's in Texas. She bought both of them from us. And here's a woman in the middle of the oil gas business who is leading the charge on director capture and transforming oxy into a world leading not only oil and gas company, right, but director capture company. And she's a classic example in my opinion of someone who saw the future and has been systematically moving towards creating that future by repurposing some not all of the cash flows of oxy, so it's still a very stable oil gas business, but positioning herself for a world in which we will have to remove CO2. And her company is going to have a piece of that. And I think, by the way, being able to navigate those types of currents, it's a real skill. Like, to be able to take a legacy company and move it in systematically move it into the future, like it's not for kids, you know? No, that's not easy. That's not it. But how she's operating is how you do it. It's not easy, but that's the job. The job is not easy. And you're, I want to talk a little bit more about some of the initiatives and some of the ideas that you've brought to the table, but before that, I just want to tee it up for the audience in a perfect future, because then again, the average person here is, this is my issue. They hear all the discourse, they hear all the conversation, and they don't really understand what's going on. They're not talking to the executives of the oil and gas or the clean tech companies. They're just, you know, turning on the news at night, and that's the information. So in a perfect future, what is the energy mix? Where does coal, wind, solar, nuclear, all of it, just lay it out so people understand where we should be heading, and why? Okay, well, let's start with this is my opinion, because I don't know that there is in fact a, there is no right answer to that in the sense of sort of an absolutist way of the world. My belief in the future is that probably what the most likely scenario will be is that you will see right now, I think nuclear is maybe 10% of the global mix. I could see it growing to maybe 20 to maybe 25% over the next, called 50 to 100 years. I think that what you will see, right, on the wind and solar side is you're going to see continued build out of that. That will need to be coupled with batteries, because there's a fundamental problem with wind and solar in that wind and solar are intermittent, wind tends to blow in the morning in the evening, and when there's a temperature differential, and the sun obviously, you know, generates when the sun's up. So, but if you need a steady stream of electrons throughout the day and the night, there's always a question of how do I take the maybe the solar, the excess solar that I'm producing during the day, stored away, and then delivered back same with wind. So, you're going to see a lot of wind and solar, I think maybe 20, 25% globally, that will be paired with storage. And then I think you're going to see a lot of natural gas, and this technology again exists today, where you will combust natural gas, and you will capture the CO2 in situ. So basically that means during the combustion process, you will actually strip the CO2 out, you will compress that CO2, and you will push it back underneath the ground. So there will be lots and lots and lots of natural gas power plants, where they're combusting, but the CO2 is not reaching the atmosphere. And so the way to think about that is it's effectively a decarbonized hydrocarbon. This is a very, very big business. There are companies already, there's actually a company that's public called NetPower that was developed by some friends of mine in a group called Eight Rivers, and they built a plant. There's one in Louisiana, they're building more in Texas, where they combust natural gas, just like a normal natural gas power plant, but instead of emitting the CO2 in the atmosphere, they capture the CO2, and then they dispose of it. So I think that hydrocarbons will play a significant role, and it might even be the largest role going forward, but CO2 will be removed from the equation in terms of emissions. And by the way, that will cost more money, right? So that means that you're, you know, the an electron that comes from an natural gas power plant will be more expensive, but it will have a zero emission profile. And this is one of the things that's really important about climate is there's a lot of people who in the discussion are like, well, it's either wind and solar, which is zero emission, or it's natural gas, which is emissions. And that's not true. You can make a natural gas power plant that emits no CO2, it just costs more money, and it's from an engineering perspective, it's a little more difficult. So I think it's probably, you know, call it 20 to, I mean, somewhere between a fifth and 25% nuclear, call it 25% wind and solar, natural gas is probably, if I had to bet, probably 40 to 50%. And then, I mean, and then you'll have like hydro and some of these other things, but I hydrocarbons going forward probably will be the majority. The question is going to be, or maybe not the majority, maybe the plurality, right? Yes. Is how carbon intense will the emissions be? And I will tell you that I think the big loser in all of this is coal. Coals going away. And again, this is another one just to give you sense of it. When the president says we're going to have lots of big beautiful coal plants, that's his opinion. He's entitled to it. But when you talk to the people who finance these plants or try to develop them, I want to build an own and operate them, there's nobody out there. Nobody. Like coal in America is gone. And I know this because I've been to Campbell County and the powder river basin in Wyoming, which is the largest mining area in the world, they all know it because they're seeing demand go down. And what are they doing? They're repositioning their assets, you know, to do natural gas with CO2 storage. It's very windy in Wyoming. They're market-driven people. And so I think you're going to see an energy mix that won't be all one thing. It won't be monolithic and that's good. And you're going to see the wind and solar people recognize that their intermittency problem needs to be addressed. And you're going to see the hydrocarbon people recognize that they need to deal with their emissions problem better. And both both will innovate and both will bring products to the market that solve the fundamental issue, which is we just have to reduce the amount of CO2 that's emitted. I think that even after speaking to you for a little bit and sort of studying your work, you make a very compelling argument for climate not just being a feel-good opportunity, but being highly lucrative. And I think that I don't see a lot of people really pushing that message and helping people understand that climate isn't just a feel-good. It's like, this is how you actually make money in it. When I think about people that have even attempted to put money into climate, people that are not in climate, but they're just smart, successful people. I want to put a couple of bucks here or there. It's always like, well, you know what? This is like the feel-good fund that I put money into. And all the opportunities you're talking about, these are real money opportunities. Yeah. And I think, look, it's got one of the things that's that is harder about climate is that you're holding yourself to sort of a double standard. And the double standard is, I want to make money. I want, I want, you know, above market returns if I can achieve them. Because my partner and I used to do that, it's like sustainability that's not sustainable is not a business. Right? So it's like, if someone gives you, you know, a hundred bucks and you invest it in something and you return them 50, and it's, quote, sustainable, what you put it in, it's like, then they don't give you, they don't give you the money again. And so your business is not sustainable. So why would you do it? When you're looking at climate, you're looking at a sort of through a dual lens. One is, I need to make money full stop. And what I need, what I'm also doing has to have a second lens, which is it has to have an economic or an environmental benefit to it. And if it has an environmental benefit, but it can't make money on it, then it's, then it's a non starter. And if it's only about making money and has no environmental benefit, then we're not going to do it either. Which means that you, that you say, no, a lot, like a lot. And, and, and there's a lot of people who will come at you when you're, when you're looking at these opportunities, I think, well, this is good for the world. It's like, yeah, but it's, it's good for the world if we can scale and repeat. Like, and, and, and, and again, if you want to give money to people on charitable basis to do things that you think need to be done great. But if you want to build businesses, and I, this may be sound a little avaricious, but I believe it. I believe when you talk to young people and they get out of school, like they need to make money. They need, they need money because they want to have houses and they want to put their kids through school. And so one of the jobs that, that you were doing, if you're going to be a climate investor, is that you're showing young people with skills and energy, you can build a career and make money and have a family and a house and, you know, and you can afford healthcare. And if you can't show that in climate, they're not going to do it or set another way. I think that probably one of the greatest, the probably the greatest poster boy for climate for a long time was a long musk because people could look at him and be like, that guy's building electric cars and he's rich. Right? And they, you know, they're like, I want to do that too. I want to, I want to have a good life. And so I think climate is a massive economic opportunity. One of my things my dad used to tell me all the time is, if you can stay calm when disasters are happening and try to look on the other side of the coin, the biggest disasters are always the biggest economic opportunities. But it's really hard when people are like pitching all the time, like, oh my God, you know, PPM keeps going up. There's forest fires everywhere. I mean, like I live in L.A., everything west of me burned down six weeks ago. Right? I asked Canyon and you can look at that and you can say, God, it's terrible. Well, you know, we're down. We're in the midst of putting together a company right now that is going to make it possible to do five day, very highly accurate, five day smoke forecasts. So when fires light up in the western US and Canada, smoke is effectively a new weather event that is being driven by climate. So there are ways to predict and then help people adjust to the fact that there's going to be more smoke and that smoke's going to be flowing across larger and larger geographic areas. So instead of focusing on it was terrible, which it was, what can we do about it? Where is there an opportunity to fix something? Be useful to other people, right? And that's, and again, you know, is smoke management going to change the whole world? No, but it will make it possible that if a fire starts in British Columbia and the, you know, the smoke gets all the way to Iowa that the people in Iowa will know that that smoke gloom is coming five days beforehand so that they can close the schools, make sure that as mechanics are not on the streets, you know, all of things that are quality of life things. That's a way to address a problem in a positive manner, in a positive economic manner, then to sort of ring your hands and say, what was me? When you think about it and I agree with you, I mean, you started a fund and you, and now you do this for a living and I want you to speak about that a little bit, but if you think about where you put your money or where you put LPs money, I think that I'm again, layman sentiment is if I put money into climate, even if it does find a way to become successful, it's going to take way longer than anything else I could put money into. And I feel like it's just going to take, you know, a ridiculous amount of time to see some sort of return. So is that true or not? How, what's your sort of investment thesis? Because now you're coming from the capital allocation side and I think this will be a lesson for entrepreneurs as well if they're thinking about, okay, if I want to build in something that's in climate or climate tech or clean tech, if I want to build, you should always be thinking from the perspective of what makes this business investable, but from your perspective, what are your expectations when you put money into a company and what should other people's expectations be? Yeah. So I think there's a couple things there and there's good points that you make. I mean, the first one is when you're thinking about capital allocation, you have to think about sort of there's, we'll call it the micro the macro, like as an example, as a, as a generic German as an individual, right? I've got a portfolio of securities and all these things and all of them are growing at different rates and different and have different sort of levels of volatility. So as an example, right? Real estate, which I own, if you know, fair amount of, it's relatively low growth, but pretty stable. And then I've got stuff, you know, where I'm investing in, you know, very high-vol, you know, I've money with a friend who runs a fund up in Seattle that does nothing but like, you know, LLM and cloud computing, right? And really, really, yeah. So I think one of the things about climate is it does in fact, if climate, the stuff that you're looking at is maybe software driven, then it has the same characteristics as any software company, which is, you know, the incremental cost of the next unit of distribution is zero. So it can scale super, super fast, very low cost. But if it's hardware, right? So if you're building like a plant or, you know, or something like that, these things, they look a lot more like real estate, right? Because you got to get them entitled. There's like, you know, there's a large component of debt. You mean, you have to use debt and leverage to get the returns that you're seeking. So if you're building, if you're an entrepreneur and you're thinking about hardware, you probably need to be thinking that these things are going to take five to 10 years, right? To get the types of returns. Now, I will also tell you, Scott, any software company I've ever invested in that really made a lot of money, took seven to 10 years anyway. Like, there's this idea that everybody's going to make money instantly. It's like, even the most, I mean, it's like, I'll give you an example. Amazon went public. I own Amazon. I bought Amazon in 2003. It didn't move for like six years. I mean, it was crazy. And I was like, I was a total believer, right? And didn't go anywhere. Same with Tesla, Tesla went public at 19 bucks a share, which I bought at that point. It didn't go anywhere for the longest period of time because it took a while for him to really get going and, you know, and then it, you know, it took off. So I think you have to like any entrepreneur, I believe, when we back companies, we're always like, listen, our view is we're going to be in this for seven to 10 years, no matter what. If it turns out, takes it off our hands in three, then hurrah, but you can't build businesses that way. I don't actually believe in it. So I think if hardware means it's always going to take longer and a lot of climate is hardware. That's true. But a fundamental thing that I tell people is, look, how do you view your house? When you buy a house, do you think you're, I mean, if you, you know, some people are into flipping houses, but most people are buying them for long term holds. I think of climate as a long term hold, because it's a problem that's not going away, and a five to 10 year horizon is not unreasonable. So if that's, and what I'd say is, ultimately, you should have a portion of your portfolio focused on long duration things. It shouldn't be 100%. That would be crazy, right? I mean, it's funny. The only person I'm aware of who kind of went that way was Musk. I mean, he took all of it. He's always paypal money and within like 90 days started Tesla SpaceX and solar city and made them all work. You're like, okay, well, some people are just not really like, wow. But for the rest of us, mortals, right? Maybe it's 5% is in climate, right? And then 10% in real estate and, you know, 40% in bonds and the rest is in public stocks. The reason I think that that's interesting, Scott, is I did a study. This is about 2019. I looked at the top. It was basically the top 400,000 ultra high net worth people on the planet, basically more than 30 million in net worth. If every high net worth family, ultra high net worth family on the globe, tax themselves 10 basis points per year on their net worth. And we invested that in direct air capture plants. It's enough capital to build all the direct air capture plants globally to take us from where we are today back to pre-industrial levels. So if the if the richest people on the planet said, I'll take 10 base for every 100 million of net worth, you put in a hundred thousand dollars. If everybody on the planet did that and we used that equity capital to build direct air capture plants, we could build all the direct air capture plants we need and get ourselves back down. So the point of all of that is you don't they you don't have to be all in on climate. That's not a realistic thing. What we need to be doing is allocating dollars the same way you allocate to real estate and the same way you allocate to, you know, internet, high ball stocks because it's an asset class. It's going to continue to grow and it has real returns. It's interesting. You mentioned that if you if you take those individuals 10 basis points off each of the individuals and and that would that would, you know, in theory solve the problem that's still putting it. It's not like they're just flushing money down the toilet. They're actually investing in a profitable business. It's just about the it's the education component that's lacking right now. That's really it. I mean, it's funny. One of the one of the exact I was going to say is like, to the extent that any of your listeners are in that category, I think, I mean, in a funny way, it's sort of like the giving pledge. And in the way that the way that I always talk to people about this is it's like, look, let's say you're worth, you know, whatever, 30 million bucks or a hundred million dollars or a billion dollars. And you built it all, building a business, whatever it is, you've worked very, very hard. You take a lot of risk and you're planning on handing it off to your kids. I plan to hand off some of what I've made to my children, right? If and today, you know, when I look at all the costs that I have in my life, a huge percentage of it is ensuring things, my homes, my cars, my health, right? Wouldn't it make sense that if you were about to hand off say, let's say your family was worth a hundred million dollars and you were planning to hand that off your children, wouldn't it make sense to send to invest some portion of your net worth to future proof the world so that when you hand all that money off to your kids, it's a world worth living in. Like you already do that, right? You spend money on ensuring your house, your boats, you know, your business interruption, like, you know, on and on and on. And yet there's no mechanism that exists for basically buying insurance against the future, right? And like most insurance premiums, they run between like 50 basis points and maybe two two percent, right? So for 10 basis points, if the top, you know, whatever the global elite or whatever we call them these days, right? If they were to do that, we could we could future proof, we could go a long, long way to future proofing climate as an idea. I think that's an interesting idea. And it's feasible. I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Ham for supporting today's episode now. Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day, just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work. Now what makes them special is how Cornbread Ham crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hand plants. That's the best part for the purest, most potent experience, no fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean, full spectrum goodness in delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing. And I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting. And they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhamp.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhamp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. The HubSpot Podcast Network is a success story partner. Now if you like success story, you're going to love other podcasts in the HubSpot Podcast Network. One of my personal favorites is iDigress hosted by my boy Troy Sandage. Each show is under 30 minutes. iDigress helps eliminate complexity, complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies to achieve true, scalable and sustainable success. If you're an entrepreneur building anything you need to listen to iDigress. This is one of the most useful business podcasts. Trust me go do yourself a favor and listen to iDigress wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that you don't like, you don't like climate doom and pessimism. You don't think it serves any purpose. You've mentioned before that you compare climate action to Pascal's wager. So you're essentially betting on solutions because you're not nothing to lose. But you're still betting on solutions. You're still taking an optimistic view. So is this just clever optimism? Is it something deeper? Why do you hate the climate glue, the gloom and do? Yeah so I mean that's funny because the other part of my college career was steady philosophy right? So Pascal's wager is fundamentally right. The question that gets posed to Pascal is why do you choose to believe in God? And he says well because if I spend my life doing you know good acts and being in service and all these other things and you know and I die and I get you know St. Peter's at the pearly gates I'm gonna get in. That's a good deal right? I want that. If I get to the end and it's just lights out and I die well then at least I spent my life being optimistic and not being depressed but thinking I was gonna get in so that's a good mental state to be in. The reason I think climate is quite similar is that the one thing we know is that if everybody decides that climate is bad and we're all doomed then nobody does anything and then the predicted future is a disaster. So why not choose to engage in a future in which you believe and whether or not you will ultimately find out whether or not this is right or wrong particularly because these fixes may take well will take longer than our individual lives. Why not choose to say I'm gonna be part of the solution I'm gonna take some piece of it and I'm gonna work on it and I'm gonna be sort of a happy worker right because that'll make me feel good it feels like I'm part of the problem and and the reality is if we collectively all do that and everybody takes a little bit of action in their part of the world the likelihood that we do solve the problem goes up dramatically and if it gets to the end and it's all you know whatever the world's 10 degrees Celsius hotter and we're all gonna die well at least you kind of deluded yourself along the way and to be happy about it right and and I will quote the other analogy that I'll that'll give you around that one of the reasons I believe this is when I was younger I thought we were gonna die at a nuclear holocaust I was terrified of it like might might you know my dad had been in the Navy there was all this talk mean we had a bunch of family that was very involved in politics and we I thought Chris Chris Jeff or you know all these Russians were gonna bomb the crap out of us and that was gonna be it so 1989 comes along I'm in college I decided to go backpacking in Europe and I'm in Europe and the wall comes down and I got to tell you it's got to like blew my mind I was like wait a second what the hell like I thought these guys were like the existential threat what do you mean they're gone and I came home and I like it changed my life because I was sort of wandering through life doing what my parents told me to do because I started figured what's the point of it all right why get home and I realized that they're gone and I realized a I had to completely start thinking about the future because I had no I didn't had no future plan but what I also realized in talking to my parents was that my dad was like the reason you didn't recognize this is that there were people working for generations starting the 1950s you know on the you know the the industrial defense complex building the economy all these things all in service of the moment where basically the US you know the USSR couldn't keep up with the US and they collapsed but you couldn't see any of those people you didn't know them and I very much believe that climate can have the same effect which is if we all do stuff and work individually on our piece over time that collective momentum will eventually turn the corner and at some point in the future people will there will come a day where all the sudden parts per million is actually going down and a whole bunch of younger people will be like but I thought the I thought the future was so dark and you're like no it's that there's a bunch of old gray hairs who you don't know who spent 25 30 years building businesses that make climate a profitable thing and now it's just a thing just part of the background and that's a that's a worthwhile thing to do because you want to make money but you also want to hand off a world to the next group that's better than you found it. No I was going to say on the flip side of that to the 20 22 23 year old what's your advice to them if they're like you said at the beginning not everybody has to be a climate entrepreneur maybe some of them want to be maybe some of them have no interest but they just they don't want to live in the world that you know is all doom and gloom and is burning up and they're and they're not going to have kids so what's the advice what do they do what's the part they can play. I think there's a couple things I mean one of them is right don't actively resist the change right because like there's lots of it might might dad taught me this right is that there's lots of things in the world that you don't necessarily agree with right but as long as they're not harming anybody let people go do it like it's okay right and so as as the climate and you know things move forward and like you know some of this stuff is going to be more expensive right just don't resist it just be like okay that's something we got to do and yeah it's going to you know change my life a little bit and I'm going to work on it that's one and two is I think try to think about how you integrate these solutions and changes into the businesses that you're already in right I mean like I wait you know I was joking people I'm like you know if I could just get a hold of Kim Kardashian like if she'd ever call me back I love kinds of ideas about how Kim Kardashian could help could drive a climate agenda in a profitable way right there's all sorts of things that you know the cosmetics industry is touching in terms of how they're sourcing stuff all right all of those things because we live in a consumer economy and so I think the other thing that I would say is it's like right think carefully about how you consume you know which is give it a little bit of thought like as an example maybe buying the lowest cost thing is not the answer you know maybe something like if like the example I often give people is if you actually look at the amount of CO2 in an automobile the single best thing you could do for climate on an on an emissions basis is not buy an electric car it's buy a used car because two thirds of the CO2 emitted from in the in the life of an automobile is from the manufacturing of it well right and I ran a big green climate fund right but I'm just telling you the math is buy a used car well nobody ever tells you to do that they try to go buy a new car right by a green by an electric car and so I think it's just trying to be thoughtful about the world that you inhabit whatever that world is whether you're working at a restaurant or working at a ski area or you know doing fashion there's some element of what you do that involve CO2 and CO2 emissions because growth equals CO2 like period and so look at your own businesses and then and then try to remain open-minded and think careful but you don't it doesn't have to be everything right you don't just spend your whole life doing it it's like if you're running a clothing manufacturer go through the supply chain and try to figure out how you can eliminate CO2 or see if you can utilize CO2 or you know all of those things it's just incorporated into your thinking right and I don't like I said I don't think it's a useful thing to say to people like everyone must be a climate warrior it's kind of a stupid I'm like who does that like we can't we have to have teachers and truck drivers and lumberjacks and you know doctors like I don't want to go to the hospital and be told by my doctor I'm super great at CO2 but I don't know shit on ecology I'm like no no no no let me let me handle the CO2 you make sure that like you know my knee reconstruction goes great like I believe in specialization and and and if but if I can find ways or you know he or she can find ways to to incorporate that into their businesses that's great what would be one belief about climate solutions that's changed the most radically since you first started researching understanding things that have changed over your career or belief that you've held this changed well I'll tell you one that that I when I actually did some research I really blew my mind um about 60 to 70 percent of the reason that see that uh like if you take cost and you build up cost the cost reduction in the production of solar panels is directly attributable to the cost reduction in the price of natural gas really wow and you've manufacturing solar panels like one of the most energy intensive steps is basically taking the silica and heating it up when you heat it up you got to burn a lot of natural gas to do it and the fact that see that see that natural gas in the United States got very very cheap was a function of fracking and and so through the transitive property cheap frat gas was the single biggest contributor to low cost solar panels globally and by the way you want to you want to get kicked out of a dinner party in West LA fast try that one on for size okay but when when when I'll go I was going to say when that when that's a truth when that's a truth then I mean that that's what's so important about having like a nuanced conversation about climate because now you understand the whole supply chain you understand all the components versus just living in a silo which is benefiting no one and and and what's what what again the interesting thing about that is some natural gas was the single biggest contributor the reduction so all the guys in Texas who were in the fracking business really they played a role and it was a big one now it's also simultaneously true that once you have the solar panel all the years of use that you get are actually very net reductive you get 25 30 years of useful life we're pursuing zero electrons or zero carbon so that nets out to the benefit you combusted natural gas which you sort of put you in the negative and then you ran a solar panel for long enough that it overcame that negative so both are simultaneously true that the solar the solar business is highly dependent on the natural gas business and solar is ultimately a great net reducer of CO2 but again that's one of those ones where you're like you know you bring that up depending on who you're at dinner with and it can go it can go either way badly you know because people don't want to hear that they're what do you mean like who side are you on I'm not on anybody's side I'm just telling you where the where the math and the chemistry took me that's funny yeah that that's one and then another one I would say is that this is another one that's wildly unpopular but is also true if you look at the net reduction in CO2 per called megajoule or you know energy unit produced over the last 25 30 years the single biggest contributor to that reduction was closing coal plants and bringing natural gas power plants online that differential between one one ton and a half a ton so that half ton the total megawatt hours produced by natural gas dwarfed the megawatt hours produced by wind and solar so moving from coal to natural gas was the single biggest carbon reducer across the US economy doesn't mean that wind and solar aren't good things and this is why one of the things about about climate that I find really hard sometimes is people are like well it's about wind and solar versus gas no it's about reducing the number of tons of CO2 so any place that we can reduce the number of tons of CO2 we should do I think it's about holding two truths at the same time that duality is very important and and and I think that is something that gets lost a lot if you want to if you wanted to sort of leave the audience with like one last thought or message you've given a lot steering this away from doom and gloom I think is very important but if there's anything that I haven't asked that I should of what would be that last message that you want to to leave people with just as they sort of listen to this they've learned a lot they're probably going to consume more of your content now because there isn't a lot of non-partisan information which is actually helpful information and also I'll also say like just tell people where they can actually find you like websites and social but then I want you to leave them with a little bit more um I think what I would say is uh consider the idea of of the what I've characterized is the 10 basis point solution um and and how you can deploy that capital into something over time and and I give you an example of it I mean with something that we've been my partner and I've been sort of toying with is the idea of effectively a perpetual fund um that says look I mean it's kind of like AOL we always joke but in the early days AOL you set your credit card on AOL and you could never turn it off they would just keep hitting it and you're like right but the idea of the same way that people invest in 401k's which is take some percentage of your money and and enough that doesn't really matter to you and think about where you could put that on a perpetual basis and just set it into motion um and and or maybe maybe the way that I would characterize this is one of my favorite expressions is that you know oftentimes you're in climate you're you're planting seeds for trees under which you will never sit the problem emerged over 150 years it probably isn't going to be fixed in our lifetime that's okay but if you take a small enough percentage of the money that you have to invest and think about where you can put it and just put it so it's so it's effectively once you write the check you just sort of forget about it forever and just let it compound over time in in with in managers or people that you think are responsible with that type of investing because it's a problem that will generate massive returns over time they're not going to be a immediate uh but it's an intergenerational problem and it's sort of like the analogy I use is like like if you were lucky enough to move to Montana or Idaho or California in the 1880s and you bought land and you really had you know a 50 year or 100 year time horizon you're rich you're really rich and that climate is not a problem that will be solved overnight but it's a it's a problem that the returns to the people who actually do it are going to be accelerating because it's a it's a problem that's not going away right you can we can job on it we can talk about it but the reality is CO2 in the atmosphere has no political opinion and so if you can think about ways that you might deploy some percentage of your net worth whatever it is into and with managers who are going to take that type of long-term view I think it's a way that you can take a portion of your portfolio or your net worth or if you want to do it as a business find those types of opportunities and and they're hard to find I mean we're one group that does it okay so I'm talking my own book right but you know seek out people who have that type of view that the problem is fixable it's really I mean maybe the final thing I would say is that I believe climate is really just a question of political will and money I don't believe it's a question of technology so find people who are good at taking technologies deploying them and building them into real businesses and and invest with them or or or if you find an idea that's that good in and of itself start the business and go and run it because the opportunity is it's economy-wide right it's not going away and the tam is just beyond imagination I mean right there is no bigger tam than energy it's the biggest tam it is the biggest and the reason that it's the biggest is that it's the most fundamental right I think of it as like hot maslow's hierarchy of needs right it's like you have to have electrons to engage in social media to get people to buy spanks to get people like it's like all the way up right and you know to watch tiktok videos like all of that is built on energy and energy right now is submitting too much CO2 and so to the people who can figure out that that bottom layer they're going to have an impact on everything above them and it'll be positive and it's enormous and it's ongoing so think about the world that way and then figure out how you can deploy you don't have to put all your money and this is the other thing is like I don't believe I believe in diversification take a small percentage of it and figure out how you can do it but commit don't do it once do it for the next 25 years right I mean I mean maybe I'll finish on this I had a friend when I was 20 who was like you should buy Berkshire Hathaway I had some money and I was like I don't know who is this old codger blah blah blah right well you know my buddy he plowed in I mean he plowed in which at that point in my life was a lot of money he plowed in like you know a couple fifty thousand dollar bonuses he plowed him in like in his 20s it's never sold it's got a lot of money wow because Warren Buffett's a great example of like I'm just gonna I'm relentlessly moving forward I'm always finding good businesses I'm just gonna keep I'm not in it for a hundred percent return today I'm in it for a compounded 15 yeah it's played it's played the long game I believe the climate offers that opportunity you got to look around it's not always obvious but great investing never is right it's I don't know I don't know if that's a great ending or not it's God but where do people actually connect with you which site I don't think you have a ton of social but where do you want people to do I'm busy doing that because I turned it all off a long time ago you can actually find me it's James A.C. McDermott on LinkedIn that's probably right do most of my posting Roshine www Roshine which is r-u-s-h-e-n dot com is is the site for our firm um and you know if you want to email me it's gym dot McDermott at Roshine dot com I will tell you I I love I've had some of the most interesting interactions in my entire professional career people listen to the podcast and then they just send an email because they're like I I'm thinking about X right I very much believe that one of the geniuses of the internet is that there are people working on problems in other sectors that they're running in parallel to you and then they hear you I mean the essence of creativity in my mind is someone's thinking about climate and some mathematicians like well but if you apply this to that you'd really fix it or and and so I love it I always tell people like you should have lots of friends you don't do what you do like if all of your friends with if all of your friends are in finance you're doing it wrong right it if all of you know and if you're a musician and all you have is guys who play music wrong move so you know email me if you've got a great idea and you want to talk about it I have email and I read it I'm not going to give out my cell phone number because that's too much don't do that don't do that I don't want to I don't want to self-docs myself no don't do that but yeah I I you know I write a lot I guess what I'd say is if you're actually interested go read all of my posts on LinkedIn because I've written probably I don't know a couple hundred of them they tend to be sort of short form but they're on particular topics usually around climate usually around can we have a more nuanced short form you know it's whatever LinkedIn has a limit but just sort of talking about trying to think about things in different ways in more practical ways then what is often I think thrown up in the the public the public domain is that guy's an idiot we're winners I'm like I'm not interested in that I'm interested in how do we solve things the last thing that I like to ask because again you've given over a ton of different ideas and wisdom about entrepreneurship about climate you've spoken a little bit about your children and and how we should think about how we want to leave the planet for our kids and I ask everybody the same questions you can take this question and interpret it however you like but if you had to pass on one piece of wisdom to your children and you could only pass on one piece of wisdom that's the lens it can be about climate it can be about life it can be about entrepreneurship anything what would that piece of wisdom be and why I probably have many so you'll have to invite me back at some point deal the the true mark of success is not whether or not you get something right it's what you do when you get knocked down because failure is is the mode most often experienced and so if you want to be successful in anything it's totally it doesn't matter what it is it's more about how you rebound from losing than it is that you pick a winner and you need to build that muscle emotionally I mean financially there's a whole bunch of things is that learning how so I'll give you a very concrete example my dad ran for governor of the state of Washington three times and he lost three times he lost in 1972 he lost in 1980 he lost in 1984 and one of the most important thing and eventually he got elected to the United States Congress when I went to college in 1989 and was on the ways and means committee for 30 years but he started off in 1972 wanting to be a public official he was a doctor he kept losing and the third time he lost I went down to the concession speech and I was I think my entire identity was tied up in the sky right because he was my dad and I thought he was going to be governor and he lost and I was in the car and I was crying and he said okay for the next five minutes we have to go into the concession speech and you have to stop crying because it just it looks bad on TV you can't it doesn't doesn't look good so please stop so I made it through the night then I'm made it through the five minutes went home cried some more went to bed my dad woke me up in the morning and he came in and he said do you know where I'm going and I said no and he said I'm going to the office to see patients and I said oh and he said I lost but I'm not a loser and if you and if you go big sometimes you just lose like effectively if you go big you will go home and then he went out to the office and he kept being a physician and you know seven eight years later he eventually won a congressional seat and he got to do what he wanted to do and it was absolutely seminal in my life because it taught me that if you want big things and you go after them sooner later stuff blows up and it just it's enough I mean no one wins all the time and when you lose if you just give up it's over right but if you choose not to give up as as as much as it hurts and it's ugly and it's public and you lose money and blah blah blah but if you choose not to give up and so the act of not giving in to failure is the defining issue for most of the people I know who are highly successful it's that they just they don't give up I mean yeah I have all these analogies in my head I was like they're willing to be dragged behind the boat or one of my favorite ones of all time is Jeff as I said I'm willing to be misunderstood longer than you right so if I had to give any wisdom it's learn how to rebound from failure and just be relentless no matter what happens just be like okay the sucks I gotta get up again do it again because at least my experience has been that's that's the main operating mode is it doesn't work and and if you give up when it doesn't work you get nothing and if you just keep hanging on um and it looks ugly sometimes right a lot of times you're like it's not working like what's going on and then you have the then you have a big success and that sustains you like the memory of that of of what it feels like to win spray but most of the time is losing so you have to get used to like how to manage losing