There is a lot of gloom about at the moment. Runs on banks in the US, property prices are falling in major markets, the threat of military action in the middle east, food shortages and the ever rising price of oil. And as backdrop to all of this is the increasing threat of Climate change.

As the Australian Government releases it’s long awaited green paper on carbon trading today, we are somewhat stunned to hear many industry associations and organisations crying foul and predicting doom and further gloom.

A year ago we attended one of Al Gores Inconvenient Truth talks. The ones that are run by people who have been trained to deliver the presentation by Gore. At the end of it, I commented that our belief was that climate change represented the greatest money making opportunity that we have ever seen. An opportunity that would make the web boom look inconsequential in terms of value delivery and wealth development.

There was a hushed silence. Then a mortified participant turned around to me and said, “That is one of more unethical things I have ever heard”.

I must admit I was somewhat stunned. There was nodding from people around the room - so she obviously wasn’t the only one who thought this way. Feeling compelled to defend myself, I simply said, “Well if its unethical to make money from saving the world you must believe, ipso facto, that it’s only ethical to make money from exploiting the world. And i think that’s why we’re in this mess to begin with.”

More stunned silence. Not sure if the penny dropped or not.

We firmly believe that Climate change is a serious threat. We believe that action has to occur. We also believe that innovation provides one of the most effective mechanisms capable of delivering a ‘real’ solutions to this challenge. One of the heartening things we discovered recently is that there is a significant opportunity for organisations to respond to climate change profitably. A recent project identified that consumers are actively looking for solutions and are prepared to pay more to deal with climate change.

As a result, we believe Climate change represents a massive opportunity for market disruption. Many products and services are over engineered and are inefficient users of resources. Organisations that respond to this climate change need with resource friendly solutions that do the job in a ‘good enough fashion’ have the potential to take significant market share.

Like the Renaissance of the 17th century, what we have termed Rennaisance2.0 has all the hallmarks of being a paradigm change in human history. So rather than seeing gloom, we see the start of what could well be a true boom of mankind.