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Investing in the Future: Navigating the Climate Transition · Simmer Down

• 0:02
  Mark Hays: Hi everyone, this is Mark Hayes, the Director of Sustainable and Impact Investing here at Glenmead.
• 0:07
  Mark Hays: Today I'm your host and moderator for our webcast titled Investing in the Future: Navigating the Climate Transition.
• 0:14
  Mark Hays: For those of you who don't know me, I lead Glenmead's Sustainable and Impact Investing Group, where we serve to help our clients align their investment portfolios with their personal values or organizational missions, which include, amongst others, the environment, health and wellness, financial inclusion, and education.
• 0:31
  Mark Hays: To do so, we seek to deliver new investment capabilities and tools to deliver what we refer to as double bottom line results, one line being financial return, the other being environmental or societal impact.
• 0:42
  Mark Hays: Glemmute's core role is as a fiduciary, and as you'll hear today, we view understanding and managing the risks and opportunities created by climate change to be increasingly a key part of that fiduciary duty and practice.
• 0:56
  Mark Hays: Joining me today to help us hone in on the state of the climate transition is an industry leader in helping us better understand the impact on climate change on our local environments and economy, Kathleen Biggins.
• 1:08
  Mark Hays: Kathleen is the founder and president of SeaChan Conversations, a national nonprofit that educates on the risks of climate change and its impacts on our jobs and economy, health and security and geopolitical stability.
• 1:22
  Mark Hays: She has presented to a wide range of businesses, associations, and conferences across the country and internationally.
• 1:29
  Mark Hays: SeaChange has reached over 20,000 individuals across 33 states with nonpartisan, science-based presentations that receive accolades from conservative and moderate audiences, policymakers and scientists.
• 1:43
  Mark Hays: Before forming SeaChange, Kathleen had a career in marketing and communications.
• 1:48
  Mark Hays: She graduated as an Eccles scholar from the University of Virginia and was a Rotary Scholar at Alberg-Loveg University in Freiburg, Germany.
• 1:56
  Mark Hays: Kathleen, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:58
  Kathleen Biggins: Oh, thank you for having me.
• 1:59
  Mark Hays: So I want to start by framing out today's conversation by focusing on and understanding the risks and opportunities associated with climate change.
• 2:06
  Mark Hays: But rather starting than my view, let's start with the view of the United States Federal Reserve.
• 2:11
  Mark Hays: Specifically via a piece they published about three years ago by their Board of Governors.
• 2:16
  Mark Hays: Now, the Board of Governors, it's a bipartisan group.
• 2:18
  Mark Hays: It's seven individuals that have been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for 14-year terms on a rolling basis.
• 2:26
  Mark Hays: And look, their role is to provide the nation with a safe, flexible, and stable monetary financial system.
• 2:33
  Mark Hays: So a recent piece included this graphic on climate change.
• 2:37
  Mark Hays: And look, they said three things.
• 2:38
  Mark Hays: One, they are seeing an increased amount of physical risks from climate change.
• 2:42
  Mark Hays: They talked about temperature rise, storm rise, seawater rise, and rising mortality, and they talked about transition risks occurring out of that.
• 2:50
  Mark Hays: They also honed in on the economic risks.
• 2:52
  Mark Hays: They talked about migration trends and change in productivity trends that they were seeing and how that could affect the macro environment.
• 2:59
  Mark Hays: And third, they honed in on more of a micro level.
• 3:02
  Mark Hays: They looked at the financial system and they noted that they're already starting to see financial system vulnerabilities that are affecting valuations and cost of capital.
• 3:10
  Mark Hays: So let's move into the present day now since that piece was written and let's unpack it from our perspective.
• 3:16
  Mark Hays: First, today, the physical effects of climate change and what we're seeing in practice.
• 3:21
  Mark Hays: Kathleen's gonna outline that right today, but also where we're going in the future.
• 3:26
  Mark Hays: Next, we'll hone in on the economic and financial risks.
• 3:30
  Mark Hays: Again, not just today, but as a future state, focusing in on how sectors such as the insurance and real estate sectors could play out over time.
• 3:38
  Mark Hays: And finally, we're gonna do a little bit of a call to action here, talking through from an investment perspective as well as a personalist perspective, how one can understand the effects in practice.
• 3:49
  Mark Hays: And certainly we're gonna frame a lot of our conversation today with the backdrop of what we're seeing, even in just over the first 100 days of the Trump administration in the US, which look certainly creates headwinds in some spaces, but also I think what you're here are pockets of opportunities, particularly on a global perspective.
• 4:07
  Mark Hays: Okay, so Kathleen, let's get into it.
• 4:10
  Mark Hays: So, and again, thank you for being here today.
• 4:11
  Mark Hays: Um look, I just framed out a little bit about you know what the Federal Reserve said.
• 4:16
  Mark Hays: I talked a little bit about physical effects.
• 4:18
  Mark Hays: Um, could you help us really frame out this idea of how climate change is creating physical impacts on our lives today?
• 4:25
  Mark Hays: And then we'll get into the effect on the economy as well.
• 4:28
  Kathleen Biggins: Absolutely.
• 4:28
  Kathleen Biggins: What is climate change?
• 4:30
  Kathleen Biggins: It's simply changes in our long-term weather patterns.
• 4:34
  Kathleen Biggins: And it is happening because we are changing the composition of our atmosphere, primarily by burning fossil fuels, which are putting up a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
• 4:47
  Kathleen Biggins: And this is leading to changes in our natural systems, which in turn are beginning to impact our human systems, like our economy.
• 4:56
  Kathleen Biggins: And we're putting up quite a lot of greenhouse gases.
• 5:00
  Kathleen Biggins: This chart actually depicts how parts per million of carbon dioxide, one of the most important greenhouse gases, has risen dramatically.
• 5:11
  Kathleen Biggins: As you can see, for the last 800,000 years, the levels of carbon dioxide have bandied between 150 and 300 parts per million.
• 5:21
  Kathleen Biggins: And these shifts were the natural cycles the Earth goes through, through ice ages and thaw.
• 5:26
  Kathleen Biggins: And now today we are around 430 parts per million.
• 5:31
  Kathleen Biggins: And if we continue on our current emissions path, it will only get much higher as we go into the century.
• 5:38
  Kathleen Biggins: And this is leading to an increase in heat.
• 5:42
  Kathleen Biggins: As you can see from this graphic from NASA, average global temperature has changed dramatically since the 1880s or pre-industrial times.
• 5:50
  Kathleen Biggins: When it is blue, it is colder than average.
• 5:53
  Kathleen Biggins: When it is white, it is average.
• 5:55
  Kathleen Biggins: When it is yellow, it is warmer.
• 5:57
  Kathleen Biggins: And when it is red, it is hotter.
• 5:59
  Kathleen Biggins: Another way to look at this is through this bar chart, which shows that the 10 hottest years ever recorded were the last 10 years.
• 6:08
  Kathleen Biggins: The hottest year ever recorded was last year.
• 6:11
  Kathleen Biggins: And this January, on a global basis, was the hottest January ever recorded.
• 6:17
  Kathleen Biggins: So things are changing.
• 6:19
  Kathleen Biggins: And that means that right now on the ground in Philadelphia, where we're filming this event, it's getting hotter.
• 6:26
  Kathleen Biggins: We're experiencing many more hot days through the years, as much as 19 days above normal temperatures today versus 1970.
• 6:35
  Kathleen Biggins: And it's expected to get a lot hotter, Mark.
• 6:38
  Kathleen Biggins: Scientists project that if we continue on our current emissions path, Philadelphia summers could feel like Nashville summers today as we hit mid-century.
• 6:48
  Kathleen Biggins: And by the end of the century, it could be eight degrees hotter and feel like temperatures today in Treeport, Louisiana.
• 6:56
  Kathleen Biggins: And for some of our hottest cities, like Phoenix, which is also the fastest growing city in the country, it's projected to get extraordinarily hot.
• 7:07
  Kathleen Biggins: In fact, their summers by end of century are expected to feel like summers experienced today in Saudi Arabia.
• 7:13
  Kathleen Biggins: And it's not just our land that's getting warmer, our oceans are heating up as well.
• 7:19
  Kathleen Biggins: Coral reef experts tell us that by the end of the century, Georgia will be experiencing water temperatures off its shore that currently are experienced in the tropics.
• 7:32
  Kathleen Biggins: And by the end of the next century, Boston could have tropical temperature waters off its shores.
• 7:38
  Kathleen Biggins: So real changes ahead.
• 7:41
  Mark Hays: Right.
• 7:41
  Mark Hays: So I think that's pretty clear around the effect that climate change is having on heat, right?
• 7:46
  Mark Hays: You talked about the effect on our cities, you talked about effects on our day-to-day lives, and you affect talked about the uh the impact on oceans.
• 7:54
  Mark Hays: I'm curious around other physical effects that you're seeing in climate change.
• 7:58
  Mark Hays: If we put heat aside, talk to us about rainstorms, for example.
• 8:01
  Kathleen Biggins: Oh yeah, there are quite a few.
• 8:03
  Kathleen Biggins: As I said, it's kind of cascades across many of our natural systems.
• 8:07
  Kathleen Biggins: Rainstorms are especially intriguing, in part because it's happening the fact that the oceans are getting hotter, as we just mentioned, and that allows more water vapor to evaporate up into the atmosphere.
• 8:20
  Kathleen Biggins: The warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor.
• 8:24
  Kathleen Biggins: For every degree Celsius, it can hold up to 7% more water vapor.
• 8:28
  Kathleen Biggins: And that simply means that when conditions are right, we are seeing more of these cataclysmic torrential rains versus restorative showers.
• 8:37
  Mark Hays: Right.
• 8:37
  Mark Hays: So I think the physical effects are really clear.
• 8:39
  Mark Hays: And I'm curious if we could almost take that as a backdrop and then shift to how you see those physical risks affecting our economies today, right?
• 8:47
  Mark Hays: Talk us through GDP.
• 8:49
  Mark Hays: And again, if you could frame out today, but also any projections or forecasts you have around how this could affect us going forward if we stay on this trajectory.
• 8:57
  Kathleen Biggins: Well, when you add all these together, especially when we have these really big storms and big impacts, we're talking about a lot of money.
• 9:07
  Kathleen Biggins: I think we've all heard about the increase in number of billion-dollar natural disasters.
• 9:13
  Kathleen Biggins: And they are ratcheting up, as you can see from this slide.
• 9:16
  Kathleen Biggins: Now it's important to note that the fact that humans are putting themselves in harm's way, that we are moving towards shorelines and fire-prone areas, kind of putting a bigger bullseye on our backs.
• 9:28
  Kathleen Biggins: But there is no disputing that these disasters are getting more ferocious and often more frequent.
• 9:34
  Kathleen Biggins: And this is leading to immense economic impacts on the local level, but even now on the national level.
• 9:43
  Kathleen Biggins: I think it's also important to note that they're putting these types of extreme events are putting pressure on something that we are dependent on as an underpinning for our economy to function, and that is the insurance sector.
• 9:57
  Kathleen Biggins: This chart shows areas that are already under duress where people cannot even get new insurance or are finding it perhaps too expensive to afford.
• 10:09
  Kathleen Biggins: And clearly, this is a huge hit to those of us who have our homes as our primary asset.
• 10:16
  Kathleen Biggins: This has a lot of knock-on effects as well.
• 10:20
  Kathleen Biggins: It can impact our ability to get credit, it can impact the valuation of our long-term assets, and it can impact the stability of public finance.
• 10:32
  Kathleen Biggins: So we may just look at it as, oh no, I can't get my insurance for my home, but for society writ large, it actually is a much bigger issue and something that we're going to need to look at and address very soon.
• 10:45
  Kathleen Biggins: And the amounts that we're talking about are significant, Mark.
• 10:51
  Kathleen Biggins: Deloitte has projected that in total our economy could be harmed significantly, that GDP could drop as much as 1.6 trillion every single year, starting in 2070, simply due to these impacts of climate change.
• 11:07
  Kathleen Biggins: And Swiss REE has also provided projections of losses across different geographical areas and globally.
• 11:26
  Mark Hays: So I think it's safe to say that, you know, thus far, at least from my standpoint, it's it's it's pretty negative news that you're sharing, right, around the trajectory on and some of the effects we're already seeing, again, on our physical world and our economies.
• 11:37
  Mark Hays: I'm curious if you could perhaps give us some hope, it might be the word, uh, around what excites you.
• 11:43
  Mark Hays: What solutions are you starting to see in energy and other areas that are starting to make you a little more, again, hopeful about where we might be headed?
• 11:51
  Kathleen Biggins: Absolutely.
• 11:52
  Kathleen Biggins: And simply because of human ingenuity.
• 11:55
  Kathleen Biggins: We are coming up with new ways to power our economy that are cleaner and safer for our future.
• 12:01
  Kathleen Biggins: And we're seeing that the economic story behind them has shifted and that they are being picked up at record rates.
• 12:10
  Kathleen Biggins: So, for example, just last year, as you can see from this slide, new technologies, wind, solar batteries, made up 96% of all new power generation that came onto the grid in the United States.
• 12:24
  Kathleen Biggins: And we know that this innovation is stretching not just in the energy sector, not just in creating new clean, firm forms of energy and storage and even carbon capture, but across almost every sector of our economy, from food to construction and even to transportation.
• 12:41
  Kathleen Biggins: And importantly, these new technologies are driving economic development all across the country and providing really good jobs in some areas that were being left behind.
• 12:54
  Kathleen Biggins: I think it's really intriguing to see from this chart, and it's something that we've read quite a lot in the press, that the predominance of this investment is indeed going in conservative leaning areas.
• 13:06
  Kathleen Biggins: And so if we back off of that, there will be real repercussions on the economic front.
• 13:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:13
  Kathleen Biggins: So, Mark, let me turn the tables on you.
• 13:15
  Kathleen Biggins: Sure.
• 13:15
  Kathleen Biggins: We're talking about all these new technologies and new forms of solutions.
• 13:20
  Kathleen Biggins: How investable are they?
• 13:22
  Kathleen Biggins: How are you presenting them to your clientele?
• 13:25
  Mark Hays: Sure.
• 13:25
  Mark Hays: Well, I think it's important to start with almost a backdrop, right?
• 13:28
  Mark Hays: You mentioned some of the policy implications that we're seeing just over 100 days in.
• 13:32
  Mark Hays: I'd categorize the uh U.S.
• 13:34
  Mark Hays: administration's policy actions both already or going forward in terms of what we expect in three broad categories.
• 13:42
  Mark Hays: First, I'll describe it as they do as drill baby drill.
• 13:44
  Mark Hays: Essentially, this is this idea of relaxed permitting and standards around much of the oil and gas spectrum here in the US.
• 13:51
  Mark Hays: Second, a withdrawal from international leadership specifically, and we've already seen this take effect, is a withdrawal from the Paris Accord.
• 13:59
  Mark Hays: And third, is this idea of a rollback and a potential rollback of a lot of parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided subsidies and tax credits to a lot of clean energy technologies.
• 14:10
  Mark Hays: So then you take that policy backdrop and you shift to how investors are handling that.
• 14:15
  Mark Hays: You know, first, yes, we're seeking to understand those policy effects in practice, how they affect costs here in the US, but also looking globally and seeing what other countries and areas of the world may step up while the US retreats from parts of these spectrums.
• 14:30
  Mark Hays: Second, is I would say we're seeing the physical risks and the effects that, Kathleen, you just talked about.
• 14:36
  Mark Hays: We're seeing it affect valuations, we're seeing it really impact certain areas like the insurance markets.
• 14:42
  Mark Hays: So you take that policy backdrop, then you grapple with how we see physical effects actually impacting that in practice, and we land on this kind of third area that I'd highlight, which is seeking to understand where are there pockets of opportunities to allow us to again mitigate and adapt around climate change in a way that creates double bottom line returns.
• 15:02
  Mark Hays: Again, impact on the environment, but financially viable returns in practice.
• 15:06
  Kathleen Biggins: So what you're talking about is a very tumultuous time.
• 15:09
  Kathleen Biggins: Sure.
• 15:09
  Kathleen Biggins: And what we're hearing about are changes in both supply and demand.
• 15:14
  Kathleen Biggins: In supply, as you mentioned, drill baby drill, we are also seeing a slowdown in the growth of oil usage.
• 15:23
  Kathleen Biggins: In fact, with the EV growth, we're seeing that we could be potentially plateauing.
• 15:28
  Kathleen Biggins: And on the power side, we're seeing uh an unprecedented increase in demand, bringing a type of pressure that we haven't felt in the United States for decades.
• 15:38
  Kathleen Biggins: So, Mark, can you talk to us a little bit about the underlying economics of these new technologies?
• 15:43
  Kathleen Biggins: How do these less traditional technologies stack up against our legacy versions?
• 15:49
  Mark Hays: Sure.
• 15:50
  Mark Hays: So I'll start by almost framing out the last decade or so with a lot of these clean energy technologies compared to some of the traditional ones.
• 15:57
  Mark Hays: And I think you know what you'll see in this slide is a lot of lines that are sloping downward, right, to various degrees.
• 16:03
  Mark Hays: Look, we've seen an enormous reduction in cost on technologies ranging from solar to onshore wind to battery storage, which is actually that really pronounced one you're seeing on the page.
• 16:14
  Mark Hays: Whereas other technologies you can see nuclear, both small reactors and large scale, still remain quite expensive as they compare to traditional.
• 16:22
  Mark Hays: But I want to zoom in actually in a little more pronounced way around what we're seeing right now.
• 16:27
  Mark Hays: And actually, this data is through the end of the first quarter of 2025.
• 16:31
  Mark Hays: And look, what you'll see right away is that solar and onshore wind are the two technologies that are still, again, on a global levelized basis, meaning removing the effective subsidies or tax credits on a global average basis, they are still cost competitive.
• 16:46
  Mark Hays: And by that you can see they're actually significantly cheaper than coal, which you can see as that third bar on the page.
• 16:53
  Mark Hays: Again, I do uh linger on areas like nuclear, which is on that far right part of the page, only because we're hearing a lot of interest, rightfully so, in nuclear technology, both large-scale and small-scale reactors.
• 17:06
  Mark Hays: Um, it is a point in the US that's uh bipartisan in terms of its level of support.
• 17:10
  Mark Hays: I think that's terrific, and we'll talk about how nuclear can serve as part of the energy mix going forward.
• 17:15
  Mark Hays: But again, it's important always as investors to root this in economics.
• 17:20
  Mark Hays: And right now, nuclear is just frankly not cost competitive with, again, other clean energy technologies and coal.
• 17:27
  Kathleen Biggins: So, Mark, tell us a little bit about how batteries play into that equation.
• 17:31
  Mark Hays: Yeah, so batteries are really important because, again, I think a really important part of energy is around this idea of intermittency versus base load.
• 17:40
  Mark Hays: And people rightfully point out that coal is a really durable, consistent source of energy.
• 17:45
  Mark Hays: Whereas wind and solar, look, sometimes it's not that windy and sometimes it's not that sunny, and you might be, if you're just using those sources, you may be without battery storage, without power.
• 17:55
  Mark Hays: Battery storage kind of solves that issue, right?
• 17:57
  Mark Hays: Where we're able to store a lot of these technologies and have that greater level of consistency.
• 18:02
  Mark Hays: I do also want to talk about one other point here, which actually I'm showing here on the page, which is around how we've seen investors over this same last 10-year period where I talked about the cost reduction.
• 18:14
  Mark Hays: Look, investors have taken notice, and what you're seeing on the page here is the difference in terms of investment compared to clean energy technologies compared to traditional fossil fuel technologies.
• 18:24
  Mark Hays: And actually, the last time that there was more capital that was put towards traditional as compared to clean energy was all the way back in 2015, and that difference has really widened.
• 18:34
  Mark Hays: You can see in 2024, more than twice the amount of capital was put to work in clean energy technologies compared to traditional.
• 18:42
  Mark Hays: Again, this is global data, and it'll be really interesting to see in the US how investors start to react to some of these policy changes in practice.
• 18:50
  Mark Hays: Early data I'm seeing is that the trajectory still certainly continues on the global period, but look, I will admit in the US there is still some uncertainty, and a lot of these investments across both sides have been paused.
• 19:01
  Kathleen Biggins: But this is really encouraging news.
• 19:03
  Kathleen Biggins: At the same time, however, we're hearing about new pressures on our demand side, especially here in the United States from electrification, but mostly from the growth of AI and the projected need for energy that AI will require.
• 19:20
  Kathleen Biggins: How are you factoring that into your advice to your clients?
• 19:23
  Mark Hays: It's such an important point, and I actually want to pull up this page here, which is from IEA and MIT.
• 19:29
  Mark Hays: Look, it's super interesting.
• 19:31
  Mark Hays: And what you can see here is if you zoom in on 2025, what you'll see is where we are today, kind of this mix across energy sources.
• 19:38
  Mark Hays: But as you move, particularly over the next five years from 2025 to 2030, and this chart is just showing the energy production needed to power data centers.
• 19:49
  Mark Hays: Very specific.
• 19:50
  Mark Hays: This is just looking at data centers.
• 19:52
  Mark Hays: It's not looking at population growth and other trends, just data centers that, again, most are looking to power AI expansion.
• 19:58
  Mark Hays: I think what's really interesting is you see all of these technologies in terms of power production and the need going up at various slope rates.
• 20:05
  Mark Hays: But it's important to point out that look, natural gas has also has a significant growth over the next five years.
• 20:11
  Mark Hays: Even coal has a slight growth over the next five years before kind of flattening out and scaling down where clean energy picks up the slack.
• 20:19
  Mark Hays: Look, I think that's a really important point.
• 20:21
  Mark Hays: A phrase that a lot of people are talking about right now is energy resilience.
• 20:25
  Mark Hays: It's this idea that look, we need all forms of energy production.
• 20:29
  Mark Hays: Yes, we need clean energy to expand and rapidly in some cases.
• 20:32
  Mark Hays: We also need natural gas and we even need a little bit more coal.
• 20:35
  Mark Hays: So I think it's important to think that way as investors.
• 20:37
  Mark Hays: Again, we think globally, but we also try to think holistically what mix of energy is actually needed in practice to get us to where we need.
• 20:44
  Mark Hays: And it is a mix of some forms of traditional alongside clean.
• 20:48
  Kathleen Biggins: Absolutely.
• 20:49
  Kathleen Biggins: We're going to need fossil fuels for a long time.
• 20:51
  Kathleen Biggins: But I guess the goal would be to use renewables when we can and fossil fuels when we must.
• 20:57
  Kathleen Biggins: And that's where we need to find that balance going forward.
• 21:00
  Kathleen Biggins: Yes.
• 21:00
  Kathleen Biggins: All right, Mark, we've talked about a lot of different sides of this.
• 21:03
  Kathleen Biggins: How do you knit it together?
• 21:05
  Kathleen Biggins: How are you bringing it together for your clients to help them navigate these tumultuous times?
• 21:10
  Mark Hays: Yeah, I would lean on active management.
• 21:12
  Mark Hays: Absolutely.
• 21:13
  Mark Hays: What you want to do if you're thinking about your investment advisor is identify someone that can really understand these policy differences on a global basis, that can invest globally, and also piece together across not just energy, but other climate technologies.
• 21:26
  Mark Hays: What do we actually need to adapt and mitigate around the effects that you shared earlier?
• 21:31
  Mark Hays: You know, I'd highlight here on the left-hand side of the page, we've been talking almost entirely today about energy.
• 21:36
  Mark Hays: And look, energy is certainly a really important part of the mix here.
• 21:40
  Mark Hays: Again, from an investment standpoint, we do think there are pockets within the US clean energy spectrum that we think will be resilient, parts of the solar energy spectrum.
• 21:49
  Mark Hays: I would say parts of areas like nuclear that are a little bit longer term, but could be some innovation around them.
• 21:55
  Mark Hays: But largely we are looking more at Europe and Asia as countries and regions.
• 21:59
  Mark Hays: That are stepping up on some of the technological development as the US retracts.
• 22:04
  Mark Hays: But I think that right-hand side of the page here is really important.
• 22:07
  Mark Hays: I think oftentimes when folks think about climate, they immediately go to energy.
• 22:11
  Mark Hays: Again, not a bad place to start, but there are lots of other areas that are critical to reduce our emissions and get us on that trajectory that Kathleen talked about earlier.
• 22:20
  Mark Hays: You know, one of those is thinking through areas like cement, right?
• 22:24
  Mark Hays: Cement, not that exciting of a sector, but look at cement.
• 22:27
  Mark Hays: It's 8% of global emissions over the last year, and there's some really interesting technological advancements that large cement companies are making to make their processes less intensive.
• 22:38
  Mark Hays: Certainly transport continues to be a big area, right?
• 22:41
  Mark Hays: Electric vehicles and the infrastructure around them to power that move going forward.
• 22:46
  Mark Hays: Again, not just in the US, and there are some policy changes here in the US that may slow the adoption of electric vehicles, but Europe and Asia are really important places to look.
• 22:55
  Mark Hays: Third and finally, I would just say technology broadly, but specifically agricultural technology is an area we're spending a lot of time on.
• 23:01
  Mark Hays: This idea that in a future where there is less arable land and less freshwater to power the amount of crops and harvesting we need, looking at companies that are looking at smart sensor solutions to be able to power agricultural expansion going forward.
• 23:15
  Mark Hays: So what I would say is generally, as a climate investor, look, think holistically.
• 23:20
  Mark Hays: Think across each part of your portfolio, across your equities, across your fixed income, and across private markets to deliver a mix of all of those sectors I mentioned and others that can help you one adapt and mitigate around this future, not just energy, but technology, food and agriculture, and transportation as well.
• 23:39
  Mark Hays: So with that, I want to wrap this up and I want to turn it around back to you, Kathleen, maybe for our last word, right?
• 23:45
  Mark Hays: So at SeaChange, you know, how could you encourage our viewers today to take action, right?
• 23:51
  Mark Hays: Whether personally, whether in their communities or more widely from their day-to-day perspective.
• 23:57
  Kathleen Biggins: Well, I think I would start with the fact that we have the ability to change our future.
• 24:03
  Kathleen Biggins: We know that this issue of climate change is coming at us fast and furiously, and that the changes we have experienced to date, the hardship, the cost, the losses, will only be much greater in the future unless we take action.
• 24:18
  Kathleen Biggins: But as you just described, we have so many new technologies, so many new ways of trying to address this issue, to make us more resilient, to adapt, to lower the risk.
• 24:30
  Kathleen Biggins: And what we need to realize is that the time is now, that we are the people who can make the difference.
• 24:36
  Kathleen Biggins: We need to raise our voices with our corporate leaders, with our policy leaders.
• 24:40
  Kathleen Biggins: We need to think about this in our investments, and we need to think about it in our personal lives, because the time to act is now.
• 25:14
  Mark Hays: So I think that's the other area that oftentimes we'll advise clients, right?
• 25:19
  Mark Hays: Okay, you know, are you open to this idea of investment and using your capital to try to affect change in practice?
• 25:24
  Mark Hays: So I think that's an important point I wanted to note.
• 25:26
  Mark Hays: So again, thank you, Kathleen.
• 25:27
  Mark Hays: And thank you, everyone, for joining today.
• 25:29
  Mark Hays: Um, if you did send in a question and we didn't get to it, we're planning to follow up with you directly.
• 25:34
  Mark Hays: We're always always happy to have a conversation to discuss any of the topics you heard today in more depth or to work with you directly with respect to your investment portfolio.
• 25:43
  Mark Hays: Kathleen, I know you're also happy for you and your team to engage with you as well.
• 25:47
  Mark Hays: Um, to start a conversation, please reach out to me or Kathleen anytime.
• 25:51
  Mark Hays: Our contact information is right there on the screen.
• 25:53
  Mark Hays: And thank you.
• 25:54
  Mark Hays: We hope to talk to you again soon.