Capitalism is killing the planet and needs to change, says investor Jeremy Grantham

Jeremy Grantham, the longtime investor famous for calling the last two major bubbles in the market, is urging capitalists and "mainstream economists" to recognize the looming threat of climate change.

"Capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems. Mainstream economics largely ignore [them]," Grantham, who co-founded GMO in 1977, said Tuesday in an impassioned speech at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago. "We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water and we treat air like an open sewer, and we do it all off the balance sheet."

This negligence is due in large part to how short-sighted corporations can be, Grantham said. "Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn't exist for them, therefore, as I like to say, grandchildren have no value" to them, he said.

Grantham has been outspoken about his concerns over climate change for years. In 1997, he started the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, which gives money to entities that look to protect the environment. Grantham's company also launched the GMO Climate Change fund last year, which invests in wind and solar companies.

Throughout his presentation, Grantham cited a slew of data showing how climate change is impacting soil, grains, temperature as well as general human health. Those numbers, coupled with Grantham's speech delivery, scared a lot of people in attendance at the conference.

Grantham also pointed out that many of the problems with how capitalists deal with climate change stem from the very nature of corporations. "A corporation's responsibility is to maximize profit, not to spend money and figure out how to save the planet," he said.

But Grantham added: "We're racing to protect much more than our portfolios. … We're racing to protect our grandchildren and our species, so get to it."

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