- Well-known venture capitalist Fred Wilson released his predictions for the 2020s this week.
- He predicted that climate change will be the major crisis of the century, comparable to world wars of the previous century.
- Wilson also predicted the collapse of real estate values in particularly vulnerable areas, and a resurgence of nuclear power.
- Other VCs have predicted growth in "greentech" and interest in sustainability over the next decade.
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Legendary venture capitalist Fred Wilson calls himself an optimist, but his first prediction for the 2020s sounds bleak.
Wilson is the cofounder of Union Square Ventures, a New York-based venture capital firm that's invested in companies like Stripe, Coinbase, Cloudflare, and Twitter. He's historically released his predictions for the coming year each January, and in his 10 predictions for 2020, Wilson places climate change - which he says will be the defining crisis of the century, akin to the world wars of the 20th century - at the top of his list.
"It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet," Wilson wrote. "This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital."
Wilson predicted a few of the ways the imminent climate crisis will play out. He expects to see carbon "taxed like the vice that it is" in countries around the world, including the US. A carbon tax has been proposed in the US before: In 2016, a study from economists at MIT and the University of Chicago suggested that it was the most promising way to fight climate change, and in 2019, 45 economists published a letter in The Wall Street Journal advocating for a carbon tax.
According to Wilson, this decade may also bring a change in real estate, as values collapse in areas most detrimentally affected by climate change, and grow in areas that benefit from a warming planet. Others have seen this coming as well, with some investors demanding discounts on coastal properties due to the anticipated effects of climate change. Some millenials are even reportedly buying land in rural locations as a climate crisis backup plan.
Maybe more optimistically, Wilson wrote that he expects to see "massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure." One of the major criticisms of President Trump's $1.5 billion infrastructure plan is that it fails to address resilience in the face of climate change.
Wilson also predicted investment in alternative energy sources, including nuclear power and solar power.
"All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors," he wrote.
In a Business Insider roundup of VC predictions for 2020, others noted that increasing awareness of climate change will make sustainability and "greentech" major areas of investment in the near future. Wilson echoed this idea in another of his predictions, suggesting that plant-based diets will become dominant by the end of the decade as food production moves to labs and people seek to lessen the environmental impact of their diets.