Former US Vice President Al Gore

During the Climate Week x Nasdaq kickoff event, VP Gore reflected on the progress made, acknowledging both substantial strides and areas where sustainability efforts have fallen short over the years. He points out an emerging sustainability revolution, driven by technological advancements in AI, machine learning, biology, and genetics, which he believes has the potential to rival the scale of both the Industrial and Digital Revolutions combined. However, he expresses deep concern about the escalating climate crisis, despite the presence of viable solutions.The urgency to address pollution and its adverse impact on the environment is not to be taken lightly, and he underscores the potential for a billion climate refugees if swift action isn’t taken, which could have far-reaching implications for global governance.

VP Gore highlights the positive shifts in climate awareness and action on the world stage, particularly in the United States, Australia, Brazil, and Europe. He emphasizes the importance of providing developing nations with equitable access to capital for the deployment of renewable energy. While private capital is pivotal in funding renewable energy projects, disparities in interest rates hinder progress in certain regions. VP Gore advocates for reforms in global institutions to mitigate these risks and foster sustainable development. Turning to Climate Trace, an organization dedicated to tracking real-time carbon emissions (featured on Episode #68), he urges collective action. VP Gore emphasizes that this moment offers a historic opportunity for the current generation to confront an existential challenge and leave a legacy for future generations. He firmly believes that political will is a renewable resource and drives the point that potential for positive change is vast when individuals and industries align with climate action.

Katie Rae, CEO & Manager Partner of The Engine

“The opportunities are ridiculously enormous, right? Think about how we’re going to fully change over infrastructure to clean energy. What do we call trillion dollar companies. Clay must know the word. But that’s what we’re shooting for. We’re shooting for companies that will represent how you’re going to find the energy, how we’re going to be distributed, and distributed to people all over the world, not just in developed nations. So it’s been such a fascinating set of conversations before this, about the developing world and energy. But areas that I’m super interested in are very low cost very clean forms of energy, certainly think of geothermal or fusion. These are types of energy sources that could be poured almost anywhere in the world. And we need it. And these are going to be biggest companies of the future. And so that’s an area I’m interested in. But it’s not as narrow as that. I think there are opportunities across decarbonization, how we grow everything, how we’re going to distribute healthcare, and medicine, these are all related to climate change, and what’s coming in the future. So I consider myself incredibly lucky, because we are going after very, very large opportunities. And we’re at a sea change in these companies starting to get to manufacturing and become very real, which is why big capital is coming towards them on the seed investor. But now we’re seeing very, very large pools of capital, turn these into the reality that we need.”

Clay Dumas, Founding Partner of Lowercarbon Capital

“There is a reason that climate has outperformed the rest of early stage tech. Let’s start with the fact that culture has shifted from boardrooms to kitchen tables. People realize today that lower carbon is just in our pure economic self interest and is also based on recognition that independence for energy and raw materials and critical input store economy is as much a matter of national and economic security as it is about private security. It doesn’t hurt that through the IRA we’re about to pump a trillion dollars into the US economy on top of this entire space, and we’re going to add hundreds of millions more from Europe, Korea, Japan, India, Brazil, and Canada directly, any economy that has its eyes open right now. Finally, you have a just a very rapid movement of talent into climate. Speaking personally, I have never been busier, the space has never seemed as big to me as it does today. And it’s part of the reason that Lowercarbon was able to just announce this raise of another $2 billion to keep investing in founders that have a reasonable ambition to go solve the biggest problem of our time. When I think about that question, the way that I respond to it is by saying the headwinds that a lot of the rest of the economy are facing right now are tailwinds for a lot of the sectors that we’re investing in.”

Dr. Vanessa Chan, Chief Commercialization Officer for the Department of Energy, and Director of the Office of Technology Transition

“There’s like almost a trillion dollars right now through Uncle Bill and Auntie IRA, right to get things out the door. But in the end, it’s really the $23 trillion in the private sector that’s actually going to commercialize this. I come from the private sector. There’s been twice in a handful times, in my opinion, that the nation is putting together to really do something at this scale and at the speed that we need, once with the Manhattan Project. And another time was when we were trying to hit Moore’s law.”

California State Senator Henry Stern

“It shouldn’t be a political risk to look at climate risk. Corporations are being bullied right now. Financial advisors, asset managers, pension funds, they’re all sort of being bullied by this strange version of economics that says we’ll all be better off if you just put your heads in the sand and pretend there’s no wildfire coming or that that bomb cyclone is not real or that the floods aren’t here on our doorstep. It’s a strange, no nothingness that has taken over at least some of our politics. In a conversation we’re stepping up on empowering corporations to address climate risks like in our legislation, SB 261 as well as 253 and some of the others, that you have to actually take a chance. And I want to acknowledge Mindy and Ceres for being brave about this.”

Mary Creasman, CEO of California Environmental Voters

“We know we’re the fourth largest economy in the world, we can use our market power to make global impacts. So right now, if you’re going to do business in California, you got to disclose your emissions.”

Chris Castro, Chief of Staff of the US Department of Energy

“Our office made two major funding announcements to advance climate action at the state, tribal, and local level, including $400 million to improve building energy codes, and help raise the floor on new residential and commercial construction across America so that it’s more efficient and more resilient. In addition, we joined the White House to launch the new American Climate Corps Program aimed at training upwards of 20,000 young people in green jobs and jointly announced the next round of career skills training grants, aimed at supporting nonprofit-led partnerships with industry and labor organizations to create programs where students can currently receive classroom instruction and on the job training to train industry-related certifications and help them install energy efficiency building technologies.”

Miles Goodrich, Co-Founder of the Sunrise Movement 

“The American Climate Corps is a climate jobs program for about 20,000 people to put America to work in actually carrying out the task of decarbonizing the economy. This has been a basically the signature policy demand of Sunrise Movement since President Biden won election in 2020. And finally, we took a step forward to making that a reality. I think there’s still some serious questions around how much funding the program is going to get and how big it can get because the national project decarbonization is just so huge, but it says a lot but the administration is taking seriously the connection between ramping up clean energy usage, scaling down fossil fuels, and putting America particularly young people to work in this national task of decarbonization. I think those three things really formed the kernel of the Green New Deal, and speaks to the power that the climate movement has built over the last few years.”

Bodhi Patil, Co-Creator of Ocean Uprise & ocean advocate

“From the voice and representation of the ocean, three key updates to share. Number one is on September 20th, the High Seas Treaty, a treaty to protect biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, the largest part of the ocean out of sight of coastal exclusive economic zones that are in countries jurisdiction, was open for signatures. About 71 countries, including the US and China, will be signing the High Seas Treaty, helping to protect and establish marine protected areas and marine sanctuaries in the farthest and most remote places on the seafloor, and in the high seas and borders beyond national jurisdiction. Number two is incredible commitments by the US, Germany, Columbia, and UKA new a have led to the full $200 million of a Global Biodiversity Fund to enact the Global Biodiversity Framework with the Kunming-Montreal Protocol established a COP15 to protect and restore biodiversity, which is a huge update. And number three is that more young people and intergenerational collaboration is being recognized and embedded into important decision making spaces. I had the opportunity to speak to 250 world leaders at the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People specifically focused on the role of young people in driving solutions to protect ocean rights and ocean health, also calling on signatures and ratifying the High Seas Treaty swiftly by the UN Oceans Conference 2025 and declaring a deep sea mining moratorium to defend the sea floor, which is a common heritage site and origin of all life. Those are a few of the actions that we decided on. There are many, many more.”

Krystal Persaud, Founder & CEO of Wildgrid Solar

“My by far favorite event of the week is marketplace of the future that always happens the Friday at the end of Climate Week. And I think it’s the most important event of the week, because it’s one of the only events that actually invites non-climate people into the mix. We had a table there for Wildgrid. All sorts of people came; there were kids, their parents, people who worked in different industries, who are coming to see what was happening in the climate space, and just to have fun and have conversations. It was very much not an investor environment, which I loved. I think so much of our work and climate is unknown to the general public. And I thought being able to talk about the issues of climate to, quote unquote, regular people who don’t necessarily want to quit their job and suddenly work in climate but should know about what the solutions are.”

Jean-Louise Warnholz of Future

“The headline around Climate Week NY and so many of the climate gatherings all around the world tend to be dominated by the severe and very real threat that we’re facing on the climate front. And right, I mean, the message tends to be there’s too little action, and it’s coming too late. This Climate Week, for me, it was fun, it was exciting, there was joy and a real sense of optimism that each and every one of us can do something that has a real impact, to be part of the solution on climate. And to me, that was deeply inspiring. I enjoyed this week. I didn’t leave depressed and overwhelmed. I left really, really hopeful because of the people that I’ve met throughout events. This week, it was great.”

Resources Mentioned

• Nasdaq: Climate Leaders Ring the Opening Bell
• US Department of Treasury: Principles for Net-Zero Financing & Investment
• California Senate Bill 261
• California Senate Bill 253
• Climate Policy Initiative & Salesforce: The Corporate Climate Finance Playbook
• American Climate Corps Program
• US Department of State: Signing of the High Seas Treaty
• Global Biodiversity Fund
• UN: Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
• Climate-first investing with GreenPortfolio & Earth Equity Advisors, Ep #66
• Moving billions through 401ks with Sphere, Ep #7
• Supporting 100,000 climate founders with New Energy Nexus & Third Derivative, Ep #40
• Supporting founders with Lowercarbon Capital and the Climate Tech Bootcamp, Ep #18
• Investing for a net positive civilization with Tom Chi, Ep #20
• Systems transformation through finance with Ceres, Ep #31
• Climate TRACE’s bold plan to map emissions with satellites, sensors & AI, Ep #64
• The power of State action with CA Senator Josh Becker and CA Envirovoters CEO Mary Creasman, Ep #16
• US Department of Energy’s Chris Castro on helping communities access the IRA and more, Ep #50
• Sunrise Movement & young people’s fight for bold climate action, Ep #68
• Climate investing past, present & future with Jenn Kenning, Ep #61
• Innovation to restore our oceans with Sustainable Ocean Alliance & Ocean Uprise, Ep #53
• Going solar is easy & affordable with Wildgrid, Ep #8
• Sustainable shopping momentum with Future & Back Market, Ep #56

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