Have you ever thought about what you'd do to save the planet if you were a billionaire? Well, this week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with billionaire high tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Ziv Aviram and see how he answers that very question. We discuss Aviram's partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to help fight climate change, hear about his path from the business world to the philanthropy space, and discuss the role that the uber-wealthy can play to address the complex predicament of a warming planet. Then, we dig into the Sea Change Radio archives and revisit part of our discussion with an icon of the environmental movement, Paul Hawken.
Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.
Ziv Aviram (ZA) | 00:18 - It's clear to me that we are facing the biggest problem humanity ever faced.
Narrator | 00:26 - Have you ever thought about what you'd do to save the planet if you were a billionaire? Well, this week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with billionaire high tech entrepreneur and philanthropist, Ziv Aviram, and see how he answers that very question. We discuss Avi Rahm's partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to help fight climate change, hear about his path from the business world to the philanthropy space, and discuss the role that the uber wealthy can play to address the complex predicament of a warming planet. Then we dig into the Sea Change Radio archives and revisit part of our discussion with an icon of the environmental movement. Paul Hawken.
Alex Wise (AW) | 01:15 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Ziv Aviramm. He's an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, and he's the co-founding chairman of Eco Bridge. Ziv, welcome to Sea Change Radio.
Ziv Aviram (ZA) | 01:30 - Thank you very much for having me.
Alex Wise (AW) | 01:32 - So first, why don't you explain this new venture, EcoBridge. What is its mission?
Ziv Aviram (ZA) | 01:37 - This morning, President Clinton and I were together on stage and announced about new fund. We call it EcoBridge, which is a climate tech fund, where the intention is to invest in cutting edge technologies that can reduce the climate edge effects. And we intend to raise between one to $2 billion and start as quickly as possible to invest in companies in a global scale, not just, uh, in Israel, or not just in the United States, but globally. And to find those companies that have the potential and capability to improve the dramatic and the serious disaster that we're facing with the climate change and in a very efficient way.
AW | 02:26 - And will it have any particular spotlight on the Fertile Crescent region and its challenges that it has with water and, and other heat related problems?
ZA | 02:37 - Climate is a very wide field and anything, almost everything related somehow to the climate change because it's so wide, we are going to concentrate on one, two, maybe two and a half fields because you cannot be expert in everything and you have to decide what is your emphasis because then you have the right analysts, the right people, and then you can dig in this specific field much more. And it starts from agriculture, food construction, and the materials for constructions green energy, carbon capture, green energy. So everything eventually somehow related to, uh, climate change. So we are still in the process to decide what are the fields that we are going to invest. We have already pretty good idea, but not announced about this yet. And the problem is huge. The problem is so big that I was amazed when I was exposed to the potential climate change outcomes. I couldn't stop in thinking about this. And after I was exposed, I decided that I'm going to put most of my energy and to try to solve this problem.
AW | 03:56 - Why don't you take a step back and talk about some of the technologies that you've been involved in as an entrepreneur and the, and the problems they've addressed.