This seems as good a place as any to tell HN about my business:
We provide systems to banks to help them include activities which mitigate climate risk into credit agreements, and evidence of compliance into credit scores. It provides a nudge for bank clients to adopt practices which both mitigate climate change and build resilience to climate-related weather shock.
We're a fintech biz built on the fundamental insight that environmental damage, including climate change, is hardwired into the design of the credit system, because issue of credit is blind to resource overuse/abuse, creating a systemic perverse incentive for environmental degradation.
If you're interested in finance, tech and concerned about climate change, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.
2 further points:
1. HN was the community that gave me the confidence to launch this business.
2. Through our learning experience, we have discovered that banks are already reducing exposure to agricultural lending due to concerns about weather shock. Where farmers can't get access to credit, their production can drop 75%. Although we are only in the foothills of climate change, our financial system will amplify its impact. There may be technological fixes for high value cash crops grown in controlled environments. Not so sure about staples.
Do you know what the effects of this "on the ground" are? Is it getting farmers to change what they grow to better adapt to the new local conditions? What affect does it have on agri-business as opposed to family farms, where the former might simply move or have the capital sufficient for large scale change in practices that the latter does not? Also are there any effects on corporations further along the supply chain - for example reducing food waste might have a greater impact on the volume of food needed which in itself would reduce environment damage?
> There may be technological fixes for high value cash crops grown in controlled environments.
Can you expand on this? I have felt the same way, and have a good understanding of the tech problem to be solved, but I'm having trouble selling the idea to any buyer. Would you attempt to anticipate crop price spikes and plant ahead of time?
By technological fixes in agriculture, I simply mean greenhouses and fertigation systems. Control the environment in which plants grow more closely and thereby mitigate risks associated with weather shock. Works great for things like capsicum, high value lettuce etc. I don't see how this can be replicated for things like wheat and maize, although admittedly GM crops potentially offer some route to solving this problem.
I think you're right, insurance and banks are both looking at a similar problem. In our approach, which is agri-specific, we work with banks to include requirements for climate smart agriculture into loan agreements. Farmers must do x, y and z if they want a loan. From an insurance perspective, this is the equivalent of requiring drivers to wear a seatbelt. We use a remote-sensing system to verify that farmers are in compliance with the system, and if they are we pass a score back to the bank for inclusion in their credit scoring algorithm. Compliant farmers have an improved risk profile and should be able to access credit on improved terms to reflect the improved risk.
What’s most striking in this article is the disconnect between the gravity of the situation and the ecological impact of “economically efficient” local solutions such as flying in workers from Thailand and lettuce from L.A.
Seriously, flying in 30000 heads of lettuce from half the world away to honor a contract with a supermarket? I can understand that it’s the “right” local solution (most likely the only way to avoid bankruptcy for the farmers), but from a global perspective this is utterly crazy.
Bananas are picked green and have a long shelf life if stored correctly. They are transported by sea. Lettuce has to be transported by air. Importing lettuce is more harmful.
I’m well aware of what produce is grown locally; I live in France and try to purchase local, seasonal fruits and vegetables as far as possible. But that’s just my point: we’ve grown used to this type of behavior, to the point that it’s become normal to fly lettuce around the world. Just another drop in the bucket as you say, but the article makes depressingly clear the fact that the bucket is overflowing.
Yes. We can realistically capture and store permanently many Gigatonnes of CO2 per year. It involves capture of CO2 from concentrated point sources (power plants, chemical plants, metal and cement factories etc) and transport to permanent geological storage. We have all the tech and know how to scale up. The only problem is that it's pure cost, no short-term benefit, so no company will do it voluntarily.
The problem is that carbon sequestration costs more now. Although it would arguably reduce future costs, there doesn't seem to be a workable economic mechanism for linking that to the present. I'm certainly no economist, but the current situation seems clear enough.
"We just need to figure out how to make money while avoiding it" is just other words for "To achieve X, we need to figure out (and implement) an incentive structure so that people would benefit from doing stuff that facilitates X, which is pretty much the only way to get them to do it".
Think about it this way: how you make somebody to do something? There's only two sure ways to achieve it - make them afraid not to do it or make them rewarded for doing it. What would you prefer - people getting executed for going over their carbon quota or somebody making money from carbon sequestration? What you would prefer to happen to you? I think I prefer the money solution over the fear solution.
Korea is experiencing the hottest summer ever in recorded history, but Korean summers have always been hot, humid and uncomfortable, so while it's definitely more uncomfortable than usual, it isn't causing too much turmoil.
For parts of the world like Europe where such extreme temperatures have been relatively rare, it will be extremely interesting - not to mention super unfortunate - to see how long it will take for individuals and societies to adjust to what very well may be a new normal and/or how it may impact migration (both in and out) patterns.
How is the hot summer in Europe indicative of a long-term climate change more than Donald Trump saying "see, it's snowing outside! I told you there's no climate change!"
The extent of the heatwaves is the difference. I saw a map showing that basically the whole world has above average temperatures this summer - past heat waves tended to be local. Much like a local record snowfall.
You have a point, I could have qualified my post with an 'if these hot temperatures continue in Europe' to hedge since the effects of climate change don't necessarily appear as super-linear phenomenon - there is scope for significant variation.
If you want an amusing (and yet depressing) perspective, I recommend Peter Watts' Echopraxia. One of the background themes is how much energy they need to pump sulfates into the stratosphere, in order to prevent catastrophic GCC-driven wildfires. Given the current heatwave around the northern hemisphere, it seems that reality is catching up.
In the last 12 months we've had tropical storms, siberian-like snowstorms and now a long hot summer. It's certainly been more interesting than our usual grey wet summers and grey wet winters.
And over here in Greece, we get sudden rains every day, whereas we used to not get a drop for three or four months. The change is really striking, and it does not bode well at all.
Yes, increasingly chaotic weather is expected with GCC. There's more water vapor in the troposphere, and so more energy is available from condensation.
Is there anywhere on earth where the weather can be considered normal or not changing much from the norm? Just curious where the best or last habitable areas would be? Perhaps New Zealand?
Readit News
We provide systems to banks to help them include activities which mitigate climate risk into credit agreements, and evidence of compliance into credit scores. It provides a nudge for bank clients to adopt practices which both mitigate climate change and build resilience to climate-related weather shock.
We're a fintech biz built on the fundamental insight that environmental damage, including climate change, is hardwired into the design of the credit system, because issue of credit is blind to resource overuse/abuse, creating a systemic perverse incentive for environmental degradation.
If you're interested in finance, tech and concerned about climate change, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.
2 further points:
1. HN was the community that gave me the confidence to launch this business.
2. Through our learning experience, we have discovered that banks are already reducing exposure to agricultural lending due to concerns about weather shock. Where farmers can't get access to credit, their production can drop 75%. Although we are only in the foothills of climate change, our financial system will amplify its impact. There may be technological fixes for high value cash crops grown in controlled environments. Not so sure about staples.
Can you expand on this? I have felt the same way, and have a good understanding of the tech problem to be solved, but I'm having trouble selling the idea to any buyer. Would you attempt to anticipate crop price spikes and plant ahead of time?
Seriously, flying in 30000 heads of lettuce from half the world away to honor a contract with a supermarket? I can understand that it’s the “right” local solution (most likely the only way to avoid bankruptcy for the farmers), but from a global perspective this is utterly crazy.
Compared to all the stuff flown around, one extra shipment is a drop in the bucket.
Iceland used to produce bananas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_production_in_Iceland
/s
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"We just need to figure out how to make money while avoiding it"
Which pretty much sums up why we are here.
For parts of the world like Europe where such extreme temperatures have been relatively rare, it will be extremely interesting - not to mention super unfortunate - to see how long it will take for individuals and societies to adjust to what very well may be a new normal and/or how it may impact migration (both in and out) patterns.
Is that an undocumented option?
But yes, I ought to have said "global-climate-change-driven". Rather a mouthful, though.
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EDIT: Spoke too soon:
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/videos/sno...
Anywhere with mountains should be OK since temperature drops x degrees for every y meters above sea level.