Vinod Khosla is generally considered to be an investment contrarian and has a reputation as a controversial venture capitalist, and he kept his rep in tact when he spoke last week at the Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference.
Organizers planned the conference to look at green tech opportunities in developing markets, but Khosla's speech ranged more widely than just that.
"Clean tech comes in and out of fashion," Green Tech Media quoted Khosla as saying, and it "will be OK if you can keep the environmentalists at bay. Clean tech has been hurt more by environmentalists than any other constituency."
The online report said Khosla told the meeting, "Don't look at theoretical scenarios – look at what makes economic sense. Nothing defies the law of economic gravity.... I don't care how green it is if it does not work for the rest of the world."
