Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and pretty
much every other crazy rich tech leader you can imagine have announced
that they’re banding together to combat climate change with a new
partnership called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. Their timing
couldn’t be better—or more telling.
Through the partnership, the group’s members have committed to use a
substantial portion of their hundreds of billions of dollars in
collective net worth to invest in early stage clean energy companies.
The timing of the announcement coincides with the global climate
conference, COP21, taking place in Paris this week, where world leaders
including President Barack Obama will convene to discuss their plans to
deal with climate change. On one hand, with this timing, the Coalition
is capitalizing on the fact that clean energy is on everyone’s radar
this week. On the other hand, the announcement smacks of a distinctly
tech-centric belief, shared by so many in Silicon Valley, that there’s
only so much that the government leaders gathered at COP21 will ever be
able to accomplish without the private sector’s help. Wired
