Profit, not Policy, Will Solve the Climate Crisis
It’s a perfect winter day but I can’t shake a strange feeling. I am alone hiking through the Catskills in late January 2020. Clear winter sun is filtering through the snow on the trees. I should be calmed by the gorgeous setting. Instead I’m feeling a charged mix of fear and excitement. I can’t stop thinking about the climate crisis and how winters in the Catskills may soon become a thing of the past. As scary as that thought is, I’m energized. There is so much opportunity and so much potential to solve the climate crisis.
I was doing what Bill Gates calls a “think week;” holing up alone with lots of books and parsing through my ideas on what to work on next. I had just stepped away from the day to day of running KitSplit the startup I cofounded and grew as CEO for 6 years. After raising a couple rounds of financing and building a gear rental marketplace for 50,000 creators, we had gotten the company to profitability. I was ready to explore my next project.
In 2013 I gave up on working on climate change policy
Back in 2013, after 5 idealistic years of developing policy and advocating for a shift to a clean energy economy, it felt like we were heading nowhere, slowly. I had worked on clean tech policy from all the angles that Washington DC had to offer. I worked on climate change at a think tank, The Center for American Progress, at a lobbying firm, the Podesta Group and in the Senate as an energy/environment/agriculture policy advisor for Senator Al Franken.
It was meaningful work, but it felt Sisyphean. With Obama in the White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate we were making some progress. I helped the Senator set up an energy efficiency retrofit program, and we managed to get a bill passed that I wrote to finance clean energy on farms.
To me, however, the progress we were making in federal government felt all too slow. Particularly considering that the pace of climate change was happening faster even than scientists predicted.
I craved seeing the impact from my work on a quicker cycle. So I left DC and headed to NYC. There I joined the tech world, where it only takes a few years and a few lines of code to dramatically change the way billions of people live and operate.
Running a tech startup I learned how to rapidly iterate and build products and services that people love and adopt quickly. I also learned how to design behavior change and get people to rent instead of buy, and do it online instead of in person and on paper.
We have 10 years, maybe
Now seven years later, in the silence of the upstate snowy woods, climate change is calling to me loud and clear. I want to use what I learned in DC and in tech to help.
The UN predicts that we have 10 years to solve the climate crisis before things get really really bad.
“We are the last generation that can prevent irreparable damage to our planet,” officials at the UN have warned.
On top of that, so far all effects of climate change, like warming, glacial melts, and sea level rise, have happened more quickly than scientists predicted. There is no time to waste.
Now I’m on the other side of starting a profitable business. I just got married in 2019, and the inevitable question of having kids is on my husband and my mind. But how can we blindly bring a baby into a world that is doomed for climate catastrophe? I never thought I’d have to consider this question, but with the mounting climate crisis I have to ask: What are the moral implications of bringing a kid into a chaotic society where before they turn 30 they have to deal with climate catastrophe? Do I really want to create yet another ghg-emitting being and add to the burdensome global population. The world I knew as a kid no longer exists. If I have a kid, I have to to make sure the world s/he/they grows up in is not apocalyptic.
I know I’m not alone in these concerns. Ted Scheinman at the BBC reported that a third of American men and women aged 20 to 45 cited climate change as a factor in their decision to have fewer children.
With these questions racing through my mind, one thing is clear: I have to be part of the solution to the climate crisis. As I consider my experience from DC and what I learned running a startup, there are 3 things I hold to be true:
1. Profit > Policy
Policies like a price on carbon could solve the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the US federal government is too unpredictable thanks to lobbyists (ask me about my stint at a lobbying firm) and money in politics via Citizens United. Many politicians are inspired by dollars to get reelected, not by facts. As a result they haven’t done enough to stop climate change. I hope they eventually will. They must! In the meantime, we can’t rely on policy to solve the problem in the time frame at hand.
We need to work on all fronts. While the policy makers are herding their cats, the business founders must rapidly get to work.
2. We need the speed of startups to solve climate change
The situation is urgent. The UN tells us we have maybe 10 years to limit the climate crisis and avoid catastrophe. That’s insane. But you know what else is insane? Startups. Insanely fast. Big tech is no angelic savior, but it knows how to move quickly. Facebook got 2 billion people to connect in 13 years. Amazon has rebuilt the entire retail, information storage, and film industry in about 2 decades. That kind of insanely fast innovation and rapid adoption is exactly what we need to solve the climate crisis.
What drives the rapid pace of startups? Profit. Capitalism is a flawed system, but it’s the one we have. Capitalism and consumerism got us into this mess, and we’ll have to use it to get out. We have 10 years. There isn’t time to rebuild the entire economic system.
3. In a sad way, climate change is the perfect business opportunity
We know climate change is happening and can predict the effects. It’s terrifying of course. But the key to making smart business decisions is to accurately predict the future and/or engineer it.
A lot of people are turning a blind eye to the issue because it’s so immense and scary, which is resulting in a strange opportunity.
Those who can think clearly in the face of enormous danger, will have a huge impact and generate an enormous amount of value and profit from the opportunities that come from solving this challenge.
There is an awakening in business about the opportunity to address climate change. Larry Fink, head of the world’s largest asset management company, Blackrock, recently released a letter to CEO’s on climate change. He believes that “climate risk is investment risk” and that “sustainability- and climate-integrated portfolios can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors.” Similarly, Chris Sacca, one of the most successful early stage venture capitalists in the world recently changed his firm’s name from Lowercase Capital to Lowercarbon Capital, recognizing the immense opportunity that climate tech offers investors. Even Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s richest men and previously one of the least generous CEO’s in history has started a $10B fund to combat climate change.
Sharing my research
For the next few months, I’ll be researching climate change and the best business solutions to avoid catastrophe. Maybe I’ll join a company or maybe I’ll start my own. I hope my exploration inspires others in business and tech to work on solutions to the climate crisis as well.
As I go I will share what I learn. In particular I’ll be sharing my perspective and summarizing concepts that took a lot of disparate research. I hope to make it easier for other folks to get answers and understand how you too can join the solution.
Here’s what you can expect from my next series of blog posts:
How to Identify the Next Winners in Climate Tech
To read more please follow me on medium at Lisbeth Kaufman, comment and react as I search for a way to make an impact on climate change. Reach out at @lisbethkaufman on twitter and facebook.
Thank you Laura Fox, James George , Charlotte Kaufman, Lily-Hayes Kaufman, Anthony Koithra, Lauren Pearl, David Phelps, Jessica Marati Radparvar, and Jamie Wilkinson for your insight and edits!
Thanks to the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator for having me as EIR while I do this research.
Thank you to the Strange Foundation for hosting me on my think week! https://thestrange.foundation/
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