On December 11, 2006, Al Gore spent an entire day at the Harvard Business School as part of his world-wide campaign against global warming. He had a well-honed, brilliantly targeted message for the young would-be MBA's in attendance. The crux of it: The stock market is functionally insane and civilization can't continue operating planet earth like a business in liquidation.
In his speech, entitled A Changing Business Climate Gore argued that
the stock market is "functionally insane" ... and what is needed is a new approach to measuring value... Over thirty years ago the average stock holding period was seven years while today the average mutual fund turns over its entire portfolio in less than eleven months. This speculation, or "chasing of the froth" as he refers to it, ignores the environment, communities, social welfare, and other important factors that have real value.
(Gore's) firm, Generation Investment Management,
essentially creates tools for the future. In their evaluation of the automobile industry, for example, Gore spoke of the remarkable accuracy with which his team predicted the current state of affairs for General Motors versus Toyota, thanks to the application of a unique measurement they call the "carbon intensity of profits."
While Gore and his firm are clearly taking big steps toward a more sustainable future, the question on many students' minds was: What can we do? When asked this during the Q&A session, Gore advocated "carbon neutrality" in which individuals offset their carbon emissions by retiring CO2 emission credits from a market such as the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Gore's admonition to the students that
civilization is "operating planet earth like a business in liquidation"
is proof that Gore gets the true nature of the challenge posed by the climate crisis. Capitalism as we know it can't be sustained and a new system based on environmental sustainability, long-term thinking and an overarching devotion to the common good must replace it if the human species is to survive.