How can tech startups help climate change?
And introduce the zen into climate solutions
Like many of you, I have recently paid a lot of attention to climate change, especially after the IPCC report that clearly says we’ve been very naughty. My social media feeds are swarmed with alarmist posts, that can send me in a spiral if I am not clear headed. Now as a software product manager who loves to solve problems — I thought alright this is clearly the problem that demands everyone’s attention, so why look away? If like me, you wonder what you can do to help, well I have good news, I can spare you the climate panics and guide you straight to some solutions you can further research. Please be my guest.
What is very clear is that everything will completely change. Society as we knew it pre-COVID will be entirely dismantled and rebuilt. There will be some constants, but even those constants will feel and look different. For instance, we will most probably still live in houses, but a lot of these might just be 3D printed clay huts eventually printed at scale. For us to reach Net Zero Carbon by 2050, supply chains will have to be entirely rethought, materials used will have to change, lifestyles will have to be radically altered etc. It’s gonna be ok I promise! I think we just need to remain flexible, pragmatic and open-minded.
Now what are the immediate problems that need solving again?
With the climate getting warmer, a lot of ramifications of the problem and its solutions will arise. It is important to note that this is not something we will solve in one generation. As our existence has a direct relationship to the climate and ecosystems all around us, we have now officially entered an endless balancing act where we are at the reigns and as a society need to act in symbiosis with all of our ecosystems, as it is now a matter of survival. This is what some (unofficially still) call the anthropocene, meaning the geological era where the environment and ecosystems are considerably influenced by us. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back.
In fact as tempting as it is to go back to ancient ways of life, we should question and restructure our current systems by mixing and matching elements that did work but also aggressively rethink and reinvent. As Benjamin Bratton argues in his book Revenge of the Real, technological refusal is not the way forward. He precisely states that the emergent technological capabilities have so far been misused for absurdly inflated individualism by the big tech businesses and should essentially be used instead systemically, e.g. to model the biosphere.
we have now officially entered an endless balancing act where we are at the reigns and as a society need to act in symbiosis with all of our ecosystems
So how can technology help (by technology I mean both new technology as well as the tech industry)? Some argue that technology is going to be more useful in measuring, adapting and for medium to long-term climate solutions, but that in the short-term, we need to use nature to fix nature. Namely that in order to solve a really large systemic issue like climate change we cannot possibly rely on new technology that has not previously worked at planetary scale.
But how can it help nevertheless? I present to you a few buckets that arose in my research, and that I found particularly interesting.
Regeneration businesses
Anything that assists in the regeneration of nature is probably front-row right now. One of the first things I have learnt early on is that there is no solution as reliable and scalable as nature itself. Which explains why we are in the United Nations decade on restoration.
This was a very humbling realisation, as you inherently have to admit the limits of humanity, in comparison to eco-systemic intelligence. Not to say we cannot learn and get better as a species, but an emergency situation requires an emergency solution, am I right?
Basically we are not yet as smart as a forest is. We have complementary skills, but so do they. It’s the notion that we need each other, rather than one exploiting the other.
This I found mostly through Yishan Wong, the co-founder of TerraFormation, and ex-CEO of Reddit. He believes that current reliable and scalable technology should only help to support nature as the solution to climate change. Meaning that to solve the current crisis we need to make use of resources and lifeforms that we have at our disposition.
In Netflix’s Kiss the ground documentary (A great watch by the way!), they argue that most civilisations ceased to exist partially due to a non regenerative relationship to the soil. In fact a lot of scientists suspect this might be what happened to the Mayans. It also argues that our current industrialised approach to farming is leading to rapid desertification, hence killing ecosystems and polarising temperatures even more.
there is no solution as reliable and scalable as nature itself
The basic idea behind regeneration is that there is no better storage of CO2 than inside living things. Soil, plants, the ocean etc. So regenerating a wide variety of ecosystems today seems like the fastest way to store carbon dioxide.
The businesses I have come across in this category are in reforestation, afforestation, organic farming, and all other forms of nature preservation. Technology tends to be helpful by measuring carbon storage and being able to attach (sometimes) reliable carbon metrics. Businesses like Pachama are using satelite and machine learning to track CO2 storage progress, and many many more players are coming into the game.
Nature appreciation businesses
Now this category might seem a little out of place, but it is a personal favourite. How does appreciating nature help?
Well if we are to tune ourselves into how to properly support ecosystems to stay balanced we will live more in tune with them through BOTH our science AND our senses, hence approaching the problem through all forms of intelligence we have (this is key!). The mindset that different forms of intelligence are complementary and not mutually exclusive.
In fact Braiding Sweetgrass, a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, argues the importance of combining her knowledge of botany alongside her indigenous tradition and culture of connection to nature. She says combining the two allows her to have a much more expansive understanding of the plants she studies and appreciates.
The more we culturally revolve around nature appreciation (or should I say connection truly), the more it will be present in our everyday life and the more abundant it will become. Now that mindset is of course insufficient as one could argue that zoos do just that but do not serve populations of observed animals at all. Well this is because the appreciation itself is exploitative. As Richard Powers said, “We say we should manage our resources better. They are not our resources; and we won’t be well until we realise that”.
This is precisely what nature appreciation should teach us. To unlearn an exploitative mindset in our approach, as systemically an exploitative system is self-consuming, and will lead to our extinction. But our paradigms will shift. They will have to for our own survival.
Businesses in this category include PictureThis where people can photograph plants and learn about them, or even Merlin Bird ID, developed by Cornell, a Shazam for birds. Generally I think the more sensitised people become the more they will become mindful consumers hence creating a shift in products that minimise environmental (and social) collateral damage.
This is why to me this category is important.
Climate adaptation businesses
As increase in temperatures causes ravages, humanity will have to adapt (or rather is adapting!), and strive for survival. Any business that facilitate those necessary adaptations falls into this category.
Think both preventative and adaptative. There will be businesses that help prevent floods and businesses that help adapt to floods for instance. For instance a lot of airlines are looking into more advanced technology in order to predict extreme weather to minimise disruptions which will become more frequent. Another example is cervest.earth helps helps businesses make informed decisions around climate risk.
A lot of these businesses will probably also sell their technologies to governments, to help facilitate planning and prevention at national level (And quite possibly soon more at international level).
Localisation businesses
Since COVID, many supply chains and businesses are all being localised. As crossing borders adds risk factors to things being stuck (think Chinese ports closing, the Suez canal being blocked etc).
This stems from the idea that just because I can afford a good from the other side of the world, in a situation of emergency, this makes less and less sense, especially as environmental damage will be reflected in the bottom line of businesses through increasing government incentive schemes.
This gives rise to many new ways of consuming locally, hence giving market share to a lot of local players instead of multinationals. This could be seen as a utopian view, and certainly will not be the case in every industry, however the localisation movement will be a very important one. It has already started but we have not seen the end yet.
Think food & beverage, clothing, transport, maybe even technology. Localisation of businesses will ironically create an entire system of global businesses that will also help businesses localise. A little bit in the same way that Shopify offers the infrastructure for small e-commerce businesses to set up shop!
The environment economy
Generally for businesses to curb their behaviour, there will be a combination of nudging techniques the government will have to put in place. From regulations down to financial incentives. These financial incentives will create markets and the ability to trade carbon credits and other forms of environmental tokens. Entire company ecosystems will be created around these. There are already a few players in the field like moss.earth. If the market responds well to it, we will see it broadened to other environmental impacts aside from CO2 emissions possibly, but first, buy-in and integrity in practices are key for this to be reliable. A bit of healthy scepticism on this front will help ensure these are indeed helpful solutions that are implemented well as opposed to greenwashing loopholes.
Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of England says the unified market for carbon offsets could be worth $100 billion by the end of the decade, up from about $300 million in 2018.
What we also see, which is further out in the future, are some radical institutions such as the Sovereign Nature Initiative talking about creating a system where non-humans are integrated inside of a comprehensive governance system and can have fair representation, much like humans only do in our current societies. We can see this with the creation Climate Nature Sovereign Index.
Imagine if plants or animals could vote on bills that they were impacted by. Of course this is still far out in the future and still sounds a bit woo-woo to us. But I would not be surprised if we reached universal governance systems eventually — assuming we overcome the short- to mid-term obstacles, which I believe we will.
“We say we should manage our resources better. They are not our resources; and we won’t be well until we realise that” Richard Powers
Conclusion
In conclusion, lots of change is incoming. Industries being radically transformed, some vanishing and some being rebuilt from the ground up. Our survival will stem from the collective belief in ourselves and in these avenues we will pursue. The more willing people are to solve problems, the more we will do so. It is the very nature of what makes us human.
What lies ahead may seem like such an unsurmountable challenge right now but it is, over generations. We will regenerate, we will appreciate, we will adapt, we will sustain, we will localise.
So if I may ask, what are you waiting for?
