I question how much of this is going to actually help with climate change and how much is just inflating another bubble that will enrich investors and do little for the climate.
So many of the startups being backed are building things that either have a very minimal impact or they're based on technologies that are so far out they won't be commercially viable for 20 years, if ever.
The big things we need are all boring infrastructure investments that don't have startup-like returns. Things like rearchitecting the electrical grid, upgrading rail and public transit, etc.
> So many of the startups being backed are building things that either have a very minimal impact or they're based on technologies that are so far out they won't be commercially viable for 20 years, if ever.
Sometimes I wonder if this the true cost of finding successful breakthroughs. Presumably lessons will be learned from these failures that will eventually lead to the successful implementation down the line. It's not a start up but if for example Meta collapses then it will still have done a lot of good for advancing VR tech.
Those things may require government investment, but if there is going to be a lot of investment in those things then it becomes worth it to figure out how to do those things more efficiently. Startups can innovate on the technology for upgrading the grid, or methods of financing it.
No startup is going to do didly-squat about the climate. If you want to reduce CO2 you will need nation-state commitment to nuclear power. Nothing else matters.
We should try though, for example did you know that 1% of humanities global energy production (that is, our civilisations entire output) is sunken into producing nitrogen based fertilisers,
That’s why my startup is working on catalysis models, so that we can get some catalysts to dramatically decrease the energy requirements of these enormous industrial processes. Also things like green chemistry (another project we are working on) is going to remove the need for a petroleum based chemical and replace it with an organic one that comes out of discarded orange peels.
Yep sure, I’m not going to have a nation-state level of impact, but the discovery of the right catalyst can often change entire industries.
So I’m trying as hard as I can, every day, to push towards a sustainable future, if enough people do it, we might be able to start to move the needle
I totally agree that a large commitment to green energy (which will have to include nuclear) is necessary. But not sufficient, imo.
> Nothing else matters
I assume you're writing this as hyperbole, but for readers who may not realize, this is definitely not true. Even if the entire grid was nuclear, there are still lots of other greenhouse emitting sources that need to be decarbonized. For example, building materials (like concrete) and livestock emissions account for ~10% of emissions alone [1]. Not to mention that many sources of transportation (16.2% of emissions) are currently not capable of running on just electricity (i.e. aviation) and need technology innovation. This problem is too complicated to be fixed by one single thing.
It’s actually worse. Even if we dropped our emissions to 0, global warming still keeps going because we’ve pumped so much greenhouse gasses into the air already.
I think OP is correct that we have to get behind nuclear in a big way. A way that we haven’t even started going down. You’re also correct that it’s not sufficient.
However. If you have a lot of nuclear capacity (and I’m talking a massive overbuild in capacity), suddenly spending gobs of it on CO2 recapture isn’t a big deal. That’s probably why OP is saying nuclear at this point is the only viable path forward. Because if you want to do recapture at scale (and you have to go try to even try to arrest the growth), nothing other than nuclear can provide the capacity needed.
I'm very much a layman when it comes to this area, but I once read that livestock emissions are exaggerated when it comes to climate change. I.e. it's true they account for a large amount of emissions, but that the missions aren't as harmful as was previously thought. Is there truth to that, or was it just hearsay?
> Why the misconception? In 2006 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published a study titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which received widespread international attention. It stated that livestock produced a staggering 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The agency drew a startling conclusion: Livestock was doing more to harm the climate than all modes of transportation combined. This latter claim was wrong, [...]
Only nuclear? That seems more like a political attitude than a considered stance. Especially with the amazing progress that has been made with wind and solar.
Not just political gridlock. Is a political identity.
Oh wow, what an amazing coincidence that the only thing that will work is directly tied to keeping the specific people in power and universally subscribing to their tax plan.
Yeah, destroy those ecosystems. Most tree planting projects are either scams or leave the local area worse off than when it started, unless it's replanting efforts on burned areas. And even then when done at a large scale to accommodate the feel-good goals of some startup, tree diversity is also not valued, and so again the ecosystem gets worse than when it started.
"In the last week I've started to receive inquiries from people running tree planting programs wanting my help. I am suggesting that they shut down their programs. Here I will explain why:" - [0]
Not if you’re a for-profit VC firm looking to invest in an area with changing regulation, which could lead to trillions of dollars of economic opportunity.
Yes. Commit to a method that will run out of fuel in under a decade before even solving half of the problem and has had well over half a century of work spent on it instead of the thing that has already eclipsed it after a decade of actually trying.
If there are going to big investments in nuclear, then it'd make sense to invest in R&D to improve nuclear power. The same goes for any other renewable energy technology.
And this is definitely incomplete, so the real number is probably significantly larger. I know of multiple climate tech deals not present in the data they cite.
Going forward, the best solution is to implement Wilson’s "Half-Earth" biosphere reserve proposal, more popularly known in its current, reduced form as "30 by 30", an agreement by 100 nations (currently) at the COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve at least 30 percent of our land and water. If more people got behind this initiative, the number of new business and economic initiatives supporting this idea would be astronomical, and would form a new paradigm for thinking about the way we see our planet. Travel, hotel, and tourist opportunities would present unlimited growth opportunities, and the new scientific research coming out of it would benefit humanity in unique ways. My overarching point is we need to stop thinking about the problem of climate change remediation as the only issue, it’s deeply connected to how we see the planet and use our resources wisely.
I’m referring to unlimited growth opportunities in the new paradigm of turning the planet into a protected biosphere. Not just green tourism and hospitality and all it entails such as education, but also new scientific research. Less than 10% of species are formally described and studied, and the amount of new knowledge that we can learn from studying instead of destroying nature is unfathomable. We talk a lot about how great space exploration is and how we need to travel to new planets in our Solar System to get the goods on the most pressing questions, but the reality is that we haven’t begun to study Earth in any measurable way, and we are losing species and ecosystems faster than we can learn from them. This is the unlimited growth potential.
Wilson originally proposed 50% but it was recently reduced to 30% by interest groups. Wilson argues that his calculations support 50% because it allows 80% of species to stabilize, species that we rely upon for survival and planetary equilibrium.
without evidence, the 30x30 initiative may in fact be a land grab by the militarily well-connected around the world. Public forests or public wetlands have never been "pure" conservationalist. It is too tempting once the doors close on the back room dealing.
I would like to hear more about why you think this. Isn’t the opposite currently occurring? In other words, we have land grabs by private companies responsible for destroying entire ecosystems for mining, agriculture, livestock and seafood, as only a few examples. We have products like Brazilian beef and Indonesian palm oil that are destroying whole biospheres. And it’s exactly the kind of back room dealing that allows these exports to flood our markets knowing full well the damage they cause.
With the Belt and Road Initiative and the increased transit that it will bring across the Eurasian continent, fueled by Russian oil, these have to be recognized as pipedreams.
We prioritize green electrification at the cost of mitigation strategies. Probably a bad choice given the in the plans Russia, India, and China are already implementing with the strong support of the Global South.
Sustainable is great, but it's got to have a real scale and a real ROI.
Readit News
So many of the startups being backed are building things that either have a very minimal impact or they're based on technologies that are so far out they won't be commercially viable for 20 years, if ever.
The big things we need are all boring infrastructure investments that don't have startup-like returns. Things like rearchitecting the electrical grid, upgrading rail and public transit, etc.
Sometimes I wonder if this the true cost of finding successful breakthroughs. Presumably lessons will be learned from these failures that will eventually lead to the successful implementation down the line. It's not a start up but if for example Meta collapses then it will still have done a lot of good for advancing VR tech.
They seek personal gain (ROI), wich is not compatible with collective gain
I think we'll see the end of VCs this century, hopefully earlier otherwise China will already have its bases on both the Moon and Mars
That’s why my startup is working on catalysis models, so that we can get some catalysts to dramatically decrease the energy requirements of these enormous industrial processes. Also things like green chemistry (another project we are working on) is going to remove the need for a petroleum based chemical and replace it with an organic one that comes out of discarded orange peels.
Yep sure, I’m not going to have a nation-state level of impact, but the discovery of the right catalyst can often change entire industries.
So I’m trying as hard as I can, every day, to push towards a sustainable future, if enough people do it, we might be able to start to move the needle
> Nothing else matters
I assume you're writing this as hyperbole, but for readers who may not realize, this is definitely not true. Even if the entire grid was nuclear, there are still lots of other greenhouse emitting sources that need to be decarbonized. For example, building materials (like concrete) and livestock emissions account for ~10% of emissions alone [1]. Not to mention that many sources of transportation (16.2% of emissions) are currently not capable of running on just electricity (i.e. aviation) and need technology innovation. This problem is too complicated to be fixed by one single thing.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
I think OP is correct that we have to get behind nuclear in a big way. A way that we haven’t even started going down. You’re also correct that it’s not sufficient.
However. If you have a lot of nuclear capacity (and I’m talking a massive overbuild in capacity), suddenly spending gobs of it on CO2 recapture isn’t a big deal. That’s probably why OP is saying nuclear at this point is the only viable path forward. Because if you want to do recapture at scale (and you have to go try to even try to arrest the growth), nothing other than nuclear can provide the capacity needed.
For example: https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi...
> Why the misconception? In 2006 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published a study titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which received widespread international attention. It stated that livestock produced a staggering 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The agency drew a startling conclusion: Livestock was doing more to harm the climate than all modes of transportation combined. This latter claim was wrong, [...]
[1] https://bze.org.au/research_release/rethinking-cement/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02612-5
Oh wow, what an amazing coincidence that the only thing that will work is directly tied to keeping the specific people in power and universally subscribing to their tax plan.
[0] - https://twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/14440088233506037...
The devil is in the details
Not if you’re a for-profit VC firm looking to invest in an area with changing regulation, which could lead to trillions of dollars of economic opportunity.
Once we have these two, full electrification become possible
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Dead Comment
That's the antithesis of conservationism
Plane travel alone counts for like 11% of emissions globally iirc
https://wttc.org/Portals/0/Documents/Reports/2021/WTTC_Net_Z...
We prioritize green electrification at the cost of mitigation strategies. Probably a bad choice given the in the plans Russia, India, and China are already implementing with the strong support of the Global South.
Sustainable is great, but it's got to have a real scale and a real ROI.
https://assets-global.website-files.com/620ed79721f9271deec0...
Had no idea there were so many segmentations in the space.