Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

SEEING GREEN
AT THE START of the 21st century, everyone agreed that the next big thing was clean
technology. It had to be: in Beijing, the smog had gotten so bad that people
couldn’t see from building to building—even breathing was a health risk.
Bangladesh, with its arsenic-laden water wells, was suffering what the New York
Times called “the biggest mass poisoning in history.” In the U.S., Hurricanes
Ivan and Katrina were said to be harbingers of the coming devastation from
global warming. Al Gore implored us to attack these problems “with the urgency
and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.”
People got busy: entrepreneurs started thousands of cleantech companies, and
investors poured more than $50 billion into them. So began the quest to cleanse
the world.
It didn’t work. Instead of a healthier planet, we got a massive cleantech
bubble. Solyndra is the most famous green ghost, but most cleantech companies
met similarly disastrous ends—more than 40 solar manufacturers went out of
business or filed for bankruptcy in 2012 alone. The leading index of alternative
energy companies shows the bubble’s dramatic deflation: