Centennial Speaker Series: Bruce Usher on Investing in the Era of Climate Change

A climate catastrophe can be avoided, but only with rapid and sustained investment in companies and projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To the surprise of many, this has already begun. Investors are abandoning fossil-fuel companies and other polluting industries and financing businesses offering climate solutions. Rising risks, evolving social norms, government policies, and technological innovation are all accelerating this movement of capital.

Bruce Usher offers an indispensable guide to the risks and opportunities for investors as the world faces climate change. He explores the role that investment plays in reducing emissions to net zero by 2050, detailing how to finance the winners and avoid the losers in a transforming global economy. Usher argues that careful examination of climate solutions will offer investors a new and necessary lens on the future for their own financial benefit and for the greater good. Companies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions will create great wealth, and, more importantly, they will provide a lifeline for humanity.

Grounded in academic and industry research, Usher’s insights bring clarity to a complex and controversial topic while illuminating the people behind the numbers. This book sets out a practical and actionable plan for investors to alter the course of climate change.

Agenda
12 p.m.: Welcome Remarks: James Kelly, director, Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis

12:03 p.m.: Speaker Introduction: David Cowen, president and CEO, Museum of American Finance

12:08: p.m.: Presentation: Bruce Usher

12:45 p.m.: Audience Q&A

1 p.m.: Closing Remarks: David Cowen

About the Speaker
Bruce Usher is professor of professional practice and the Elizabeth B. Strickler ’86 and Mark T. Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School, where he teaches on the intersection of financial, social, and environmental issues. He was previously an entrepreneur and worked in financial services in New York and Tokyo. Usher is also the author of Renewable Energy: A Primer for the Twenty-First Century (Columbia, 2019).

Copies of Investing in the Era of Climate Change will be raffled off to attendees.

This event is co-sponsored with the CFA Society New York, the Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis, and the Museum of American Finance.