Nick van Osdol from Keep Cool shares climate priorities for 2024
We all need to think bigger than 'global warming.'
We hope you enjoy a guest post from Nick van Osdol, one of our favorite writers in climate tech. Nick is a writer and analyst who covers the intersection of climate and business for his own media company, Keep Cool, as well as other outlets and companies. He also enjoys writing short fiction. In both areas, he enjoys finding, dissecting, and telling ‘underpriced’ stories, i.e., ones others aren’t focusing on or are discounting. He lives in Brooklyn and also tweets too much.
What to focus in on 2024 for climate work
by Nick Van Osdol
I was once thoughtfully asked why I do what I do, namely write about, analyze, and synthesize information at the intersection of climate and business. My response was that writing a newsletter is, in practice, not altogether dissimilar from taking an investor or policymaker's mindset:
"Writing is a form of capital allocation… [directing] attention is a form of capital allocation. There's a finite amount of attention that people can pay to things in the world, the same way there's some finiteness surrounding things like human capital … and financial capital."
All of that is a highfalutin way of saying that if you command even a few people's attention, you have some responsibility to direct it, well, responsibly!
Entering a new year, here are the climate topics I think are worth (more) attention in 2024. Most of them have to do with opening our aperture, i.e., simultaneously holding more things in our scope of focus than we have previously. This isn’t easy. But with respect to climate, it’s essential.
Moving beyond carbon dioxide
One thing I chafe against often in my canvassing of information about and coverage of climate change and climate ‘technologies’ is how much focus there is on carbon dioxide and the power sector and transportation. It’d be a shame if one of the things that came out of this decade of climate work was an overallocation of attention on these things at the expense of others.
Part of the reason I think this happens is because the power sector and transportation are areas where we've made appreciable progress. At least in terms of things like cost curves (see below for lithium-ion batteries) that resonate with technologists' and venture capitalists' brains, as well as actual deployment of technology and infrastructure in the real world.
Don’t get me wrong—doubling down on areas where progress is being made makes sense because a) it’s good to have things to be excited about, and b) it’s good to put resources into things that are already ‘working.’ I’d be the last person to suggest that any ounce of focus on carbon dioxide is inherently misplaced. Carbon dioxide is a powerful driver of global warming, especially the longer the time horizon you’re concerned with; some of the carbon dioxide emissions emitted today will be warming the planet when your grandchildren have grandchildren.
That said, carbon dioxide is roughly half the global warming ‘story.’ Methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, and many other factors all play significant roles in driving warming, especially on shorter time frames, say, between now and 2050.
While there’s certainly more attention being paid to greenhouse gasses like methane now—as evidenced by exciting announcements like the Global Methane Pledge, which hundreds of countries have signed, committing to voluntarily reduce methane emissions 30% by 2030—investment is another ball-game. Capital flows are often a bit misaligned to the scope of different sectors' contributions to climate challenges. For instance, transportation gets 40%+ of private investment while accounting for ~15% of global greenhouse gas emissions (see below).
It’s not difficult to understand why. People know how to sell cars (and energy). Hence why renewable energy and EVs get 15-25x more private investment than the entire methane ‘category’ does.
As far as mitigating short-term global warming is concerned, that investment is a bit misaligned to maximum impact. Reducing anthropogenic methane emissions by 50% (with existing technologies and practice changes) could mitigate twice as much warming as achieving more than 50% reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector and transportation out to 2050 would (there’s some back of the envelope math I’m doing here, happy to share it with you if you’re interested).
Of course, investing in methane mitigation and renewable energy and EVs aren’t at odds with one another. I’m just making a point re: focusing more on methane. Food for thought!
Moving beyond global warming
Similarly, global warming is just one of many climate change ‘stories.’ Greenhouse gasses are just one problem. To offer a well-trodden example, take tire pollution from vehicles:. Yes, tailpipe emissions, including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, are a big problem. That said, all cars, including EVs, produce a lot of pollution as their tires wear on roads. According to one estimate, 78% of the microplastics in oceans come from synthetic tire rubber. Those microplastics end up in fish, which end up on your plate, meaning those microplastics end up in your body. The long-term consequences of that are unclear, but are unlikely to be fun.
Biodiversity loss offers us another appreciable example. Firstly, it’s worth noting that biodiversity loss is accelerating. That’s bad; more than 50% of global GDP depends on biodiversity to some or a significant degree. Next point: there are five main categories that threaten biodiversity, according to IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The categories of biodiversity loss drivers include:
Invasive species
Pollution
Land use change
Over-exploitation
Climate change
Of those five categories, climate change and global warming are certainly important. But if you're weighing those against some of the other drivers, then things like land use change are significantly more detrimental to individual habitats and species.
Land use change doesn’t go away if global warming does. Nor do invasive species. We could wave a magic wand and cut global carbon dioxide emissions to zero tomorrow and still find ourselves in a deep quagmire of nested climate challenges. I say that not to discourage anyone, but rather as a reminder that some – or indeed many of us – should spend our time elsewhere, some of the time.
Moving beyond data, trends, and technology (i.e., the power of story)
There are many things that, at first blush, seem unrelated to ‘climate’ that could have outsized impacts on the trajectory of climate work and action. Take, for instance, grocery prices. If you live in the U.S., as you’ve likely experienced, they’re high! We’ll circle back to them in a minute.
Then there’s the 2024 U.S. presidential election. I hate to be the guy to bring this onto your radar. Regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, I reckon we can agree election years are an attention drain. So far, Trump leads Biden in early polling in many swing states.
Suffice it to say, a Republican administration in the U.S. would be less friendly to public-sector involvement in climate work in any capacity. Insofar as the U.S. has taken a leadership role in supporting certain climate technologies since 2020 – a leadership role that has encouraged progress in lots of other jurisdictions globally – if the U.S. takes a backseat again, it’ll be a big step backward.
Things like the election are influenced by the stories people tell each other as they are by data points, statistics, technology, and policy. The election itself isn’t intangible. It is a discrete event that will soon dominate many media headlines. What’s less tangible are things like the story that Biden’s admin hasn’t managed the economy well. This story is strong, regardless of whether it’s ‘true’ or how much control any presidential administration has over the economy, inflation, or, to come full circle, grocery prices, in the first place.
This intangible, story-led dynamic mirrors much of climate work. The stories we tell each other about climate change and climate work are very influential and memetic. Climate change isn’t intangible. It’s happening all around us. What is less tangible are the questions we ask ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves about them, whether to motivate, self-soothe, or guide our efforts and how we process what’s happening. Are we making progress? Are we focused on the right things? Is climate work resilient to the stochastic whims of the market, election cycles, or the many seasons of our individual lives as human beings? What we believe to be true about these questions, what stories we feel the strongest affinity with and repeat to others, will reflexively influence what does happen in 2024, or out to 2030, or out to 2050.
Mind what stories you’re being told. Mind what stories you’re being sold. Mind what stories you’re telling yourself. Mind what stories you’re telling others. Ask yourself, once in a while, what happens if that story isn’t true? Or at least, more complex? I’ll always be happy to discuss!
(Water) Cooler Talk
🏫 Climate in the Classroom
Have you ever wondered what the climate conversation would be like if the world had learned about it in science class? Some states are looking to make that a reality. A New York Times story highlighted states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California that are trying to implement climate into mandated curriculum. Students in New York are starting to learn about carbon emissions, climate adaptation and animal welfare as early as third grade. Learning about these concepts from a young age will only deepen future generations' understanding of climate change. As one teacher put it, “If they start in kindergarten with those basic concepts, then by the time students come to third grade… they would become kind of little experts.”🏞️ Green Sabbath
In a news cycle dominated by stories of climate peril, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Doom Scrolling has become an all too familiar activity for most of us. Michael Coren of the Washington Post suggests a reprieve from the noise that will still connect us with the environment – a green sabbath. The idea originates from Jonathan Schorsh, a professor of Jewish religious and intellectual history at Germany’s Universität Potsdam. He recommends a day that people disconnect from their busy lives, from screens and opt to connect with nature instead. Schorsh’s hypothesis is this could help curb emissions, as well as change the way we interact with the very topic of climate change.❓ Burning Climate Questions
The Yale Program on Climate Communications published a report on the beliefs and attitudes of Americans on climate change. It found that 1 out of every 10 Americans experience climate anxiety, and over half of respondents believe climate change is mostly caused by humans. Now respondents are asking questions about how to address climate change. Common questions include: What can countries do to reduce global warming? What about the US specifically? How much will it cost the US to reduce global warming? Bloomberg’s Jessica Nix pulled answers to these questions in a recent article. This type of straightforward climate communications is a good way to make the problem accessible to everyone, and answer the questions people are most curious about.
This is great. Data driven and informative. My work focuses on energy and so I tend to think in terms of emissions. I had never thought about things like land use and the stat that 50% of global GDP is based on biodiversity.