‘They Don’t Understand’: Henry Kravis Rebukes Climate Protesters Who Interrupted Him

(Bloomberg) -- KKR & Co. co-founder Henry Kravis pushed back against climate activists who interrupted a speech to criticize the firm’s fossil-fuel investments, saying they underestimate the difficulty of shifting the economy to clean energy.

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Kravis was speaking on a panel at the Conference of Montreal on Monday when protesters walked to a podium on stage and accused him of “burning Canada.” KKR owns a stake in Coastal GasLink, a controversial pipeline project in Western Canada that will supply gas to a huge liquefied natural gas facility on the coast of British Columbia.

“They don’t understand the facts,” Kravis, 80, said after the protesters were led away. “They would like to push a button and have no hydrocarbons.” It will take more than $200 trillion in investment to move the global economy to net-zero emissions by 2050, he said.

“I’m not quite sure I understand how we’re going to get there, and I don’t think we ever get there totally,” Kravis said, while acknowledging that climate change is a serious issue that requires significant measures.

Last year, activists protested at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, calling on the institution to cut ties with Kravis and his wife, Marie-Josée Kravis, who’s the chair of MoMA.

Last week, Coastal GasLink sold C$7.15 billion of new debt — a record for a Canadian corporate bond deal — to refinance construction costs. Like most developed nations, Canada has a complicated relationship with fossil fuels, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is seeking to put the nation on a path toward slashing its reliance on non-renewable energy.

Also on Monday, more than 20 protesters were arrested outside of Citigroup Inc.’s headquarters in New York. The activists have promised a months-long campaign against the Wall Street bank.

(Updates with Trudeau in penultimate paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the quote in the second paragraph.)

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