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How to Align Venture Investing to Save Humanity from Climate Collapse
A practical way two old ideas can help us align incentives to save help humanity address the climate emergency
TL;DR (because this is a very deep dive): Our current way of building and financing companies is structurally incompatible with addressing the effects of climate collapse on our societies. The systemic challenges we need to grapple with today require rethinking the system we use to bring new ideas into the world as products or services. By understanding where VC and the contemporary unitary corporation lead to perverse incentives, we can start to sketch out what a new innovation ecosystem might look like, upgrading the model we’ve relied upon since the end of the Second World War. By aligning investment with expertise, we can more rapidly create solutions that are independently validated and ready to be integrated into our everyday infrastructure. A practical example is given towards the end of the essay.
Today’s approach to Venture Capital and Private Equity is not working to avert the effects of climate collapse on humanity. Over two decades of VC and PE investment have not disrupted any key carbon emitting industry without massive government subsidies. This is troubling, because our innovation ecosystem is…
