John Hofmeister, Former President, Shell Oil Company
Amy Myers Jaffe, Executive Director, Energy and Sustainibility, UC Davis Graduate School of Management
Matt Rogers, Director, McKinsey & Co.; Co-author, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century

A new generation of companies such as Tesla, Cree, OPower, Nest and others are creatively disrupting industries and creating new markets in the way that General Electric and General Motors did in previous waves of innovation. Those companies and technologies are poised to capture the huge business potential presented by growing consumer classes in China and India and the need to transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

The rise of 2.5 billion consumers in Asia and elsewhere will put further strain on water, food and other resources already under stress and drive commodity prices higher. Prices for oil and energy have quintupled since 1998. Metal prices have tripled. Food prices have risen 75 percent. Yet humans have adapted and doomsday scenarios have not materialized. Yet.

Will business innovators be able to make enough stuff to satisfy the world’s burgeoning consumer class without wrecking the planet and triggering climatic chaos? Is techno-optimism delusional? A conversation about the huge investment opportunity in tech-driven efficiency and decoupling economic growth from carbon pollution.