Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
This taught me a lot about how decarbonization is really going (NYT)
There’s a nationwide sriracha shortage and climate change may be to blame (NPR)
Oil companies chase carbon removal cash (P)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
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CarbonCure Technologies, a startup building carbon removal technologies for the concrete industry, raised an $80M round led by Blue Earth Capital (BW)
Autonomous charging solutions startup Rocsys raised a $36.3M Series A led by SEB Greentech Venture Capital (FN)
Battery Smart, a provider of a battery swapping network for electric two and three wheelers, raised a $33M pre-Series B led by Tiger Global and Blume Ventures (FN)
Allonnia, a startup extracting value from waste, raiseda $30M Series A extension led by Bison Ventures (BW)
Bedrock, an autonomous underwater vehicle startup, raised a $25.5M Series A co-led by Northzone and Primary Venture Partners (TC)
Wildfire detection startup Pano AI raised a $17M Series A extension led by Valor Equity Partners (TC)
Laser fusion (a type of nuclear fusion) startup EX-Fusion raised a ~$13M seed round led by ANRI, Nissay Capital, Delight Ventures, and more (FN)
ChargeX, a Munich-based provider of a charging solution for electric cars, raised a $12.6M Series B led by UVC Partners (FN)
Dublin-based EV charging startup Go Eve raised $3M in first funding from Carter Gem, Automotive Ventures Inc., Kero Development Partners, and more (FN)
Green Theory
Survival of the Survivors
As the tree of life unfurls more and more branches (new species diverging from the old) the same basic building blocks develop into the dazzling diversity we see in life on earth. Survival of the fittest offers a quick explanation, but the phrase has fallen out of favor with biologists.
Criticized as an oversimplification, or an empty tautology, survival of the fittest also prompts dubious claims about human society and business. The redundancy of the phrase comes into sharper view when we call evolution what it really is: survival of the survivors.
What does it mean to survive?
In this case, fitness and survival mean the next generation of a species lives on. It’s not that the toughest or fastest animal survives. What counts as fitness in one generation may hurt in the generations that follow, if environmental changes become unbearable.
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All must adapt to other living things coming and going. Operating along yet another dimension (as we discussed in The Peacock’s Profits) sexual selection may accentuate traits with no relevance to viability of a generation’s survival, and reproduction in an ecosystem.
All of these forces, and more, interact, as species expand and contract, in and out of different places. Survival doesn’t mean a species is superior in any quality—only that it survived that time and place. In Bill Nye’s evolution paperback, Undeniable, he calls evolution survival of the good enough.
Does competition pick winners, or survivors?
Single-elimination tournaments, such as professional team-sports playoffs in North America, showcase the error in thinking whoever’s left standing is necessarily the best. Especially when relatively few games determine the outcome of a sports season, the opportunity for a less-skilled team to miraculously overcome the odds, and win, opens up.
More generally, the survivorship bias pushes us toward data that survive some selective pressure, rather than searching for and integrating lost information. Is the information that survives the chaos of data gathering the best information, or is it just what was good enough to get back to you?
It’s hard to reduce all of evolution into a few words. While survival of the fittest may have helped Darwin’s theory establish itself, its misapplication (as a justification for ruthless competition and the entitlement of dominant groups) means it’s time for the term to evolve.
Survival of the survivors reminds us that it is not perfect design that determines what evolves and survives, and what fades into the fossil records, or other dustbins of history.