I went on a quick assignment for our business blog, Epicenter, to the Always On Venture Summit West last week. Our main interest was a panel featuring four venture capitalists who invest heavily in cleantech, which usually takes the form of technology that reduces carbon emissions one way or another.
Represented on the panel were Raj Atluru of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Erik Straser of Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bruce Pasternack of CMEA Partners, and Ira Ehrenpreis of Technology Partners. Given that they have their money in technologies that could benefit from pricing carbon, you'd expect, generally speaking, that these VC would be optimistic that the US would enact some progressive climate change policy.
But when the fresh-faced moderator asked the panel of VCs if they thought the US would enact climate change policy in the next two years, only Pasternack answered in the affirmative. Straser said, "If you'd have said four years, I would have said yes."...MORE
