Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
The next 10 years in carbon removal (AG)
MCJ’s investment in Solugen (MCJ)
Sweden says it has uncovered a rare earth bonanza (NYT)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
Wallapop, a Spanish circular marketplace, raised an $87.4M Series G extension at an $832M valuation led by NAVER and Korelya Capital (TC)
Lithium extraction startup Summit raised a $50M Series A-2 led by Evok Innovations and BDC Capital (PRN)
No Meat Factory, a plant-based protein manufacturer, raised a $42M Series B led by Tengelmann Growth Partners (BW)
Sublime Systems, a startup decarbonizing cement production, raised a $40M Series A led by Lowercarbon Capital (BW)
Soil measurement and insights startup EarthOptics raised a $27.6M Series B led by Conti Ventures (PRN)
Evigence, a startup providing freshness data to optimize food quality, raised an $18M Series B led by Cleveland Avenue (BW)
Membrion, a ceramic desalination membrane startup allowing for the recovery of water from harsh environments, raised a $7M Series B led by PureTerra Ventures (BW)
enrichAg, a platform providing real-time soil composition data, raised a $6M seed round led by At One Ventures (PRN)
Green Theory
Risk and Hope: Two Sides of the Existential Coin
The last few weeks, we’ve looked at some privileged responses to societal risks perceived for society. An existential risk, plainly, represents a risk that threatens existence. Whether concerned about the existence of reproducing humans, the existence of a biodiverse web of life on planet earth, or innumerable other definitions, the critical list of existential risks will likely vary.
Some may decry people focused on risks as overly negative, but limiting suffering surely does far more good at the margin, than helping someone who’s already satisfied become a bit better off. Still, learning about and grappling with existential risks can promote dread, fear, and a sense of futility.
Finding a socially positive career may help recapture some of that sense of control, but exclusively looking at one or more threats to humanity will leave a person deflated after too long. This week, a look into a meeting of SF Bay Area residents who gathered to peek at the other side of the existential coin: hope.
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Coming together to begin answering, “what’s the future we’re trying to build toward?”, guests at the Foresight Institute-hosted event included researchers, startup founders, activists, students, technologists, and more. What did they have to say about their existential hopes for the biosphere, climate, and its role in human flourishing?
Climate Comms
The climate-focused subset of attendees clearly came with more risks than hopes on the mind. Immediately jockeying to dispute relative likelihoods and impacts of different climate catastrophes, some of the group’s most vocal interlocutors struggled to establish common ground. At one extreme, one might say: “If you don’t see this specific risk as large as I see it, I care more about convincing you of the threat before we discuss solutions or hopes.” On the other side, someone could counter: “If you fixate so much on the size of the risk, you’re not going to inspire people to help solve it, anyway.” More simply, assessing whether someone was too hopeful or too worried distracted from the question of what to hope for in the first place.
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The group’s most grave and outspoken assessor of climate risk shared their opinion that the largest climate threat is a breakdown in communication. Exposing the duality of all challenges to humanity, the risk of communication breakdown also comes alongside the hope that better communications build bridges to breakthroughs. Returning to Dr. Katherine Hayhoe’s coalition-building advice for sustaining and acting on hope in the face of the climate crisis: climate communicators must focus on the resonance of shared issues, and accessibility of shared hopes, in order to make shared progress.
Consumerism in the Crosshairs
Despite rifts over risks, none in the group spoke up to protect consumerism: a seemingly indefensible target of climate critique. Whether or not capitalism itself was thought to be the critical mechanism of consumerism, the conversation reinforced that exhausting limited resources chasing a paradigm of unlimited wants (especially without respect to diminishing returns to “satiated” individuals) poses a serious existential risk. Communal living and personal restraint in purchasing bubbled up as actionable solutions to the risk of consumerism. Reframing these solutions as hopes, perhaps a post-consumerist (or unconsumerizing) lifestyle offers more experiences of collective joy and depth in personal gratitude, claiming that space the empty connections to new possessions had possessed before.
Hope for Nature’s Power
With plenty of runaway climate catastrophes to worry about, where a bad effect gets amplified the more it occurs, there are other systems that could offer the opposite. Negative feedback loops deliver a positive result from a negative input, and climate change may have several of these negative loops helping slow down the pace of climate change.
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For example, the short-term “greening” effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere helps promote biodiversity and oxygen production. On the other hand, most of these feedback loops come attached at the hip with damaging, “positive,” feedback loops. Nonetheless, a surprisingly powerful negative feedback loop may end up delivering a natural breakthrough in fighting climate change.
Finally, drawing insight, inspiration, and—above all—hope from nature resonated with most participants. Recognizing the link between human and non-human resilience, at least through the inspiration nature offers us, likely helped align the group on the underlying definitions of human flourishing that went unspoken.
To Talk Is To Hope
Studying risks helps prioritize problem-solving; without hope, why solve at all? Turning to other problem solvers should offer a renewed sense of hope, but don’t expect to escape considering risks and threats altogether. Despite bumps in the road to smooth communication, this group of mostly strangers still opened up a climate hope conversation that challenged perspectives, expanded thinking, and didn’t burn bridges.
To act together in reducing existential risks such as climate change, we must communicate. In that way, every attempt at well-intentioned dialogue holds at least a kernel of hope.
The Closer
Jupiter’s south pole, captured by NASA’s Juno Spacecraft from about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops. This image, taken during the 22nd flyby of the solar-powered spacecraft, revealed a new, massive cyclone on the gas giant’s surface. Juno was launched in 2011 and entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016, where it is expected to stay until 2025.