4 Degrees Map
Oct0
I am excited to see maps like this beginning to come out. It makes things a little bit more tactile.
However, this particular one gives me mixed feelings. It is riddled with “could” and “might”; however, it does not effectively present evidence of likelihood. As a result, I fear it comes off feeling light on substance. I could credibly say that aliens could land on Earth by 2050, but that does not make a particularly compelling case for action.
Is there some way that we could start putting some more measurable bands around climate change risks, so that our reports won’t sound quite so much like scaremongering?
Carbon Capture and Recycling
Oct0
CCS, or CCR as I suppose this development from Carbon Sciences to convert CO2 back into fuel would be called, has looked like it was a long way off by all anaylst reports thus far. However, a solution that looks likes this one is critical. Even if we could migrate entirely to non-fossil fuel energy sources, we would still need have carbon intensive to make plastics and a whole host of other materials vital to day-to-day living.
Aptera and Tesla…these make me want a car again.
Sep0
So…when I moved to London, I entered the first era of my licensed driver life where I didn’t have a car. All in all, I didn’t miss it too much. Ok, maybe it was because my Honda Civic had less horsepower than the go-carts I used to drive a Putt-Putt. Or, maybe it was because even in one of the most-fuel efficient cars on the road, it could cost a 100 bucks just to make a short road trip. Regardless, as I handed my car’s title on to its next owner, I wasn’t filled with too much remorse.
Today, I’m wanting a car again, and it’s not just a lingering dream of driving that enviable 1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spider California from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. No, these are cars that I could, like, seriously buy within the next couple years.
Aptera
The first is eye-turning car called the Aptera with three wheels, which I think rocks even if commentators claim it is to avoid safety regulations (half true – the car will be safe, they just didn’t want to be tied up for years in bureaucratic red-tape proving it from what I can discern).
Ok, I know what you’re thinking. “Yeah, yeah, this looks great and all, but pretty concept cars have been around for ages. That don’t mean I’ll ever be putting my hands on one.” These were my thoughts as well…until I learned that these were scheduled to be on the road before the end of the year with a price tag under $30,000. Yeah, so they’ve got a 400 car wait list and a three car per week production schedule now which leaves me waitin’ a very long time, but something tells me the demand for this if it really gets some traction will leave them scaling up pretty quick.
On top of everything else, it is yet another innovation coming out of Southern California’s Idealab. I haven’t found a company they’ve supported that isn’t fairly awesome, and I’m still spell-bound by the work my friend John Howard is doing at Distributed World Power.
Tesla
The other is a bit more mainstream in the clean tech world, but I still gotta give them some props. Tesla Motors has an electric sports car that goes 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds and can travel over 240 miles on a charge.
Tesla Motors - Not bad, eh?
Yeah, it still doesn’t pass the American road trip test (particularly because you need a solid night to recharge), but it could be a pretty sweet intra-city ride. Besides producing a stunning machine, Tesla Motor’s list of investors and board members including Elon Musk, Sergey Brin & Larry Page, Jeff Skoll, and others reads like a Who’s Who of the Silicon Valley success stories. Yes, there’s been some rumors of slow progress to profitability, but the company is pushing down the cost curve at the same time that fuel prices are proving extremely unpredictable. Sounds like the makings of a compelling value prop to me…
We talk about these cars being ages away from true scalability; however, with battery technology advancing at breakneck speeds, stunning but little-spoken-of innovations in lightweight, strong materials, and focused attention from many our our world’s most renowned innovators, this is one area where I find myself to be rather optimistic. Props to the first person who sends me a message and says they’ve got one.
If ya wanna read more about the science, check out the pretty much any link from McKinsey’s automotive alternative energy links or the aggressively optimistic Rocky Mountain Institute.
Why Climate Change?…and a personal history
Sep2
Recently, a lot of people have been asking me why I have begun working in the climate change field. I thought I’d spend a couple minutes trying to lay out my reasoning.
For those who don’t know, my background is in economic development and cross-cultural communication. I grew up working with issues of race relations in Memphis, Tennessee. I went to the University of North Carolina and created my own major in the Dynamics of Social Change. I worked in South Africa and the South Pacific helping large foundations improve their investments in youth and community empowerment. In short, I matured in a staunchly non-profit environment.
Then, one day, while standing on a street corner in a township in the Cape Flats, I had a light-bulb moment. I had been working all morning with a group of young people to develop a structure for them to have input with the local community government. Throughout the session, I noticed that three of my generally more participative attendees were increasingly disengaged and, at the time, attributed that largely to my own failure to create an engaging conversation. We took a break for lunch, and that’s when I found myself standing behind those same three boys outside. They were chatting about how they hadn’t eaten in three days and would have to go beg in the tourist district of Cape Town to get some food that evening…and I thought a few more anecdotes would solve my engagement problem!
I left Cape Town with a growing conviction that for-profit mechanisms were vital to achieving scalable, sustainable impacts in the communities I hoped to serve. I delved into social enterprise for a time and then headed off to McKinsey & Company to get a deeper grounding in business fundamentals. I spent a year doing very, very straight forward business work: automotive supply change, telecom strategy, media and marketing. The learning curve was tremendous, and I don’t regret a second of that time.
Nevertheless, a year into my time at the Firm, I found myself looking for something more. I was ready to start integrating my social passions into my newly developed business skill sets. After scouring a whole range of options, I arrived a climate change. Amidst all social and environmental issues the world is confronting today, climate change is the single most innovative in turning an environmental externality, climate change, into an internal market mechanism, carbon emissions. By cultivating this market approach, climate change has achieved two unique outcomes: (1) the cost efficiencies of a market-based approach to carbon reductions and (2) the opening of an expansive new arena for business innovation. Indeed, experts have sized just the North American market for carbon in 2020 at upwards of a trillion dollars.
Thus, I focused my time at McKinsey on climate change; first developing a report on the capital costs associated with making economically-attractive energy productivity improvements around the world, then delving into the public equity shareholder value implactions of climate change policy and technology. Every step I took left me more convinced that the growing climate change industry was the optimal grounds for growing a new and successful social enterprise. Today, companies around the world, including the one I’m a part of, are proving that conviction true. The industry’s market size is rising at exponential rates. At the same time, millions upon millions of tons of carbon emissions are being avoid. We have a long way to go, but I’m excited to find myself on the front lines of this most ground-breaking of civic sector battles.