12 Comments

Hey Nikhil, thanks so much for writing this! I'd encourage you to list Climatebase.org in this post as a resource for those looking to find job opportunities at climate-positive organizations. Since the beginning of 2020, hundreds of people have gotten jobs through Climatebase. Even Joro has sourced talent from Climatebase. :)

We're also one of just three official partners of Project Drawdown. Their research is what inspired our origin story.

Thanks again for writing this piece. As Katharine Hayhoe says, "The single most important thing you can do about the climate crisis is to talk about it". ✊🌎

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cheers Evan, thanks for sharing!

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My wife recently started her MBA at Sloan and I listened in on the orientation day lecture by Professor John Sterman. His team has developed a really interesting interactive climate model which was used by the Obama administration. The model allows you to toggle variables like population growth and see the effect it would have on global temperatures. I was reminded of his lecture and model while reading this blog so I thought I'd share - https://croadsworldclimate.climateinteractive.org

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thank you for sharing, Saif!

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Finally a VC writes something about the wildfires we've been experiencing here in Norcal, great start!

Year after year the impact of these fires is increasing and it seems like a matter of time until all of our SF Bay Area houses are engulfed by flames.

I am a Software Engineer and I want to help prevent that from happening.

There are a few teams working on fire related tech, such as One Concern in Palo Alto and TechnoSylva from Spain.

Most of these teams seem to focus on fire modeling to help direct the effort of fire response crews to get the biggest bang for the buck.

This is indeed valuable, but…

Why is there apparently not a soul working on fire suppression?

In my opinion, the most effective strategy would be to rapidly detect the fire and then extinguish it just as quickly, when it is just starting and has a much more manageable, smaller size.

For this to work, I think two aspects must be tackled:

Real-time Fire detection: it looks like satellite imagery is starting to get helpful for this and we seem to progress relatively well on that angle.

Fire suppression: it seems as if zero progress is being made on this, why?

When I think fire suppression, armies of drones come to mind, armed with fire extinguishing bombs as payloads.

This fire retardant tech came out of Stanford and I guess it could be used as a payload:

https://www.ladera.tech/fortify

Are you aware of any team that is working on fire suppression tech?

If not, what are we waiting for?

I would be happy to help.

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really appreciate this, Frederic. I do not know off-hand of anyone working on fire suppression tech, except for one very early stage idea from a friend. I will follow-up with you if/when I do hear about projects here... agree that it is incredibly needed.

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Incredible read and incredible resource for any consumer, business and organization looking to make real strides towards decarbonization. We agree. It must be the next big thing.

From the whole Cloverly team: Thank you for your passion and long time dedication to the climate crisis. We'd love to connect in the future and support your efforts in any way that we can.

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Love it Nikhil! Let's not forget that we need our government to be pushing as hard or harder than the private sector on climate solutions in order for us to halt/reverse climate change. To do that we need a US President, Senate and House of Representatives believe in the science which is unanimously supported by the scientific community, and they need to be ready and willing to step up and fight to protect the places and earth we love for our children and grandchildren. The 2020 election is now 68 days away. If anyone reading this is not already actively involved in the 2020 election, there is still time. Talking about your feelings with friends and posting them online feels nice, but does very little. If nothing else, donate to the opponents of Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Cory Gardner, Susan Collins and support Joe Biden. If you have more time, consider volunteering for Tech For Campaigns or for a campaign directly. Call your friends and relatives in swing states and put them on the spot: who are they going to vote for in November? Do they realize what is on the line? If we fail in November, it is going to be very, very, very bad for our planet.

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💯, Rob.

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Decarbonization is the next big thing and with growing startup attention, funding and roadmaps, it does feel like we're making good progress. Treau is awesome. HVAC is a massive opportunity. On observation on current climate tech interest doesn't talk much about adaptation and resilience. I suspect you'd enjoy digging in as there are complex systems risks starting with re-insurance and cat bond risk pricing. At the same time, there is work happening to upgrade communities and assets to increase resilience. Global heat, fires, flood, wind...our current services and infrastructure we designed for an old normal. And on top of all of this, it seems like we'll see increased speculation around locations - most common question in the last week seems to be about where one might move to minimize climate risks. To you last point - there are links into many different issues - being able to work remote, also means more flexibility to manage climate risk, but what happens to everyone else?

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Nikhil thanks for bringing this up and building/pushing for the momentum while the pandemic has diverted our attention.HERE where you should HELP and INVEST. I would like to share a valuable project that has been implemented in US to rejuvenate soil that sucks the CO2 emissions and provide energy. I advise everyone who read this to watch this real project that got destroyed and prevented from going further ahead : The need to grow https://www.earthconsciouslife.org/theneedtogrow

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