PASADENA, Calif. — Green tech guru Vinod Khosla probably didn’t win many friends among the chardonnay-and-carbon-offsets crowd Tuesday during an appearance at Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference, where he castigated well-heeled enviros for thinking that driving a Toyota (TM) Prius and other “feel-good solutions” will save the planet
“The Prius is more greenwash than green,” the venture capitalist said on stage during a conversation with Fortune senior writer Adam Lashinsky. “Priuses sell a lot but so do Gucci bags. The hybridization of cars is the most expensive way to reduce carbon.”
“We do a lot of feel-good things like put solar panels up in foggy San Francisco so a few middle-class and upper-middle-class people feel good about themselves,” he added.
Ouch.
If Khosla was typically on the offensive, he’s been on the defensive a bit of late over early investments in corn-based biofuels. Alarm has escalated over the past year about the impact of taking food crops out of production to grow a gasoline substitute.
After Lashinsky read a recent quote from the Indian finance minister – “food-based biofuels are a crime against humanity,” Khosla agreed that “food-based biofuels are the wrong way to go. We have much better alternatives.” He has long championed cellulosic biofuels that can be produced from non-food plants like switchgrass or from wood waste and characterized his ethanol investments as a way to get the lay of the biofuels landscape.
Never shy about stirring the pot, he declared that, “People’s views on green are obsolete.” The way to fight climate, according to Khosla, is not to focus on putting solar panels on roofs or building electric cars but increasing the efficiency of things like engines and the operations of mainstream businesses.
Worried about the high price of oil? Don’t. “My forecast for 2030 is that price of oil will be below $25 a barrel,” Khosla said. No matter, he added, because by then biofuels will be cheaper.
So stick that in your Prius.
Green Wombat 
Is he saying that using a hybrid car or solar panels don’t reduce carbon right now? Is driving a gas guzzler right now better than driving a hybrid? Is not using solar panels better than using them right now? Sure, there will be better alternatives, but are we supposed to wait fifty years and do nothing until better alternatives come out?
Khosla is right. This type invariably votes for the Clinton and Obama type candidates whose solution is always to strangle the life out of any original thinker with regulations. Hell if these clowns knew how to regulate we wouldn’t be in the position we are today.
Thank god George Bush had the courage to play the boogey man and inspire some real panic and real action.
In your face bold actions and not yet more words and regulations are what is needed in times of crisis.
The real issue is that the masses need to be educated on the “real” carbon equation like the net carbon footprint of a Prius over its lifetime (birth thru death & disposal), rather than partial ones like its carbon efficiency on the roads!
But I agree that until that information or a better alternative is not readily available, Prius is among the current crop of great alternatives available to driving gaz-guzzling SUVs. Same goes for Solar panels as well!
what we are supposed to do is walk, ride a bike, use mass transit even if you have to walk to get there.
we are supposed to live within our harvest.
we are supposed to consume adequate, not excessive nutritious calories, not processed junk food
we are supposed to remember that our actions matter much further down the line than is immediately obvious
Dreamdeceiver, it’s appalling that anyone could call “playing the boogey man” an appropriate course of action for an elected official. If George W Bush deserves credit for jump-starting the environmental movement, Bull Connor deserves credit for the Civil Rights Movement.
So what if being green is a feel good “hobby” that doesn’t have much of an impact, it’s still better than no positive impact at all.
I agree, public transportation, walking and bicycles are very effective solutions when feasible. And if they aren’t feasible with your current lifestyle, then maybe consider changing your lifestyle. Eating less food, and less meat also has a very positive effect.
Buying used things is also a great way to cut down on pollution and global warming….look at all the self storage places being built!
If China is going to play games with their currency, tax their goods, why are we giving our country to China?
It is all BS. Economics alone will solve any climate change problems, if they exist at all, and I don’t believe they do. When the price of anything gets too high people will cut back and that is the way it should be. I am not doing anything special with regard to the so-called climate problem and I am feeling pretty good about it.
dreamdeceiver–we can thank george bush for several things, but playing the environmental boogey man is not one of them. He lacks courage, and he has been cowed by his cronies into flawed policies his entire administration. We can thank him for destabilizing the middle east, exasperating billions of people at home and abroad, and driving oil (and corn) prices through the roof with a short-sighted, arrogant and unsustainable energy policy. His disapproval rating of 69% this week speaks for itself.
Khosla is a venture capitalist … and smoking something. We cannot have VCs driving public policy; they are the ultimate ‘fast money’ crowd.
The rice shortage has nothing to do with ethanol. It is caused by hoarding of rice in large, rice-eating countries, such as China and India.
Slap a carbon tax on oil at the barrel (not the gas pump), switch to more efficient US-made vehicles (lighter weight, smaller engines, like Ford and GM), convert ALL corn into ethanol, and let the cows eat grass (which is what they prefer anyway).
In the world we live in there are several issues that raise the ire of both environmentalist and capitalist, one in the effect of what we do and the other in the opportunity in what can be done with the effecting issue. There are organizations that are looking at GHG solutions that can drastically change our world, we should encourage these organizations and slow the rhetoric and work on a common solution.
Behind the Zion Curtain…
Before Bush we had much empty rhetoric and pandering lies.
Bush has been the perfect CEO, the Alpha MBA, a manipulative master who has set the wheels in motion for the change the USA so desperately needs.
Opposition leaders in the past and present have been so narcissistic that they think their simply uddering a phrase makes it reality.
While I know there has been and will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth don’t fret; I’m sure the opposition will promise free orthodonic care in exchange for your vote.
Khosla, once again, is incredibly misguided, misinformed and almost ignorant. It’s the greenies or environmentalists who first recognized that biofuels were not the answer years ago, not just now. Unfortunately at the time Khosla was pouring money into this area without any real knowledge of its negative consequences. He, like other VCs are looking for the quick fix but not looking at the whole picture (e.g. food, environmental), which is dangerous. I agree that driving a Prius, using canvas bags and replacing light bulbs with CFLs are not the answer. But I find it ironic, that someone like Khosla thinks he has such a good read on what will work and what won’t work when he gravely invested in a solution that is now having detrimental affects. Geez, even Colbert is recognizing this.
Mike from Redwood,
Did the people of India and China suddenly start eating twice as much as they did starting last year ? That’s when the price spike started. No, silly man, it’s the wall street money managers who jumped on the commidities bandwagon that caused ALL MAJOR COMMODITY prices to rise including OIL. You see it’s simple — when you dump trillions of dollars into the commodities futures, prices go up. Using the Chinese and Indians a boogey men for simple minded folks such as youself to distract you from the truth. Prices will come down when the money managers switch to other sectors.
As much as I hate to say it, the upside of the recent unquestionably “highly manipulated” increase in oil prices has been a world wide realization that we can no longer depend solely on petroleum to power our economies. That realization, and the subsequent increased interest in developing alternatives, is a good thing. Alternatives can replace “some” but not “all” of our dependence on oil in “some” venues not “all” for many years to come. The alternative technology is still too inefficient and the distribution channels are far too limited. Think about how long it took to build the infrastructure for pervasive distribution of gasoline! It did not happen overnight. That means one simple fact remains: the solution is going to include a dramatic increase in “all” our resource alternatives, including increasing our access to untapped oil reserves whereever they are and the use of incresed nuclear power alongside wind and solar and the development of much more efficient automobile engines. But anyone who believes that “conservation” alone is the answer, especfially in the face of rapidly increasing demands from a rapidly developing world, is a naive fool. Conservation has a part to play, but relative to all the other components, it is not a centerpiece to a realistic policy, but simply a necessary minor contributor. We all need to wake up and stop believing in fairy tales about conservation alone being the solution to all our problems. It can play a part in the overall strategy, but it will never be “the” solution. That, and we need to understand that no part of the overall strategy is more or less important in meeting our current and future needs at prices that do not create world-wide economic collapse and, even worse, starvation. It is morally unacceptable to place conservation above basic human needs for survival, especially among those economically disadvantages populations who are least able to cope with the dislocations that blind conservation can carry with it.
Two inconvenient FACTS: 1. It’s been getting COOLER for the last 10 years while CO2 continued to RISE by ~10%. The IPCC models predicted a .3C temp increase – THE MODELS ARE WRONG! …. PERIOD! And no, you may NOT say that ‘other factors’ are responsible becuse those are EXACTLY same the ones we declared were actually driving climate 20 years ago! 2. Finer resolution Vostok ice core data is HARD PHYSICAL PROOF that earth’s climate affects CO2 – 180 degrees BACKWARDS to the enviro-nitwits that FORCED their models to show CO2 causing global warming. Climate alarmism really IS just one HUGE scam and now even the politicians are interested in piling on to FLEECE the public just like Al Gore and Maurice Strong. Two very despicable people.
moron!! Do you possibly have Exxon Mobil stocks? You should sell them and invest in cellulosic ethanol (ceetol)or hydrogen. How such ignorance still remains in the U.S. is really amazing! You sir ARE Amazing. Stay in Happy land, you would probably be no use anyway.