Deep-ish Perspectives
What tech do you think will accelerate the fight against climate change the most, why?
What tech will help us most in the fight against climate change?
The answer might not be what you think, read below to see what this week's Impact Technology professionals believe will fix our earth's most pressing environmental challenges.
Felix Collins, Cofounder @ Full Circle Biotech (insect and microbe-based sustainable fish feed)
“Being in AgTech myself, I'm keenly aware of the devastation caused by the agricultural industry. Tech that can reduce dependence on soy will do wonders for preventing deforestation; prevention is far more important than restoration because biodiversity loss is the third biggest threat to humanity. Avoiding the tipping points where forest ecosystems become so destroyed they become net emitters is crucial.
However, if we're talking about accelerating the fight against climate change the most, I'm tempted to say something like Twitter.
All the startups in the world mean very little if the true carbon culprits - the major fossil fuel companies, etc., and the governments that enable them - don't feel pressure to change.
Twitter can be a great negative via misinformation spreading, but if this is somehow fixed, the positives that come from access to important information - where protests are being held, bringing environmental crimes to light, allowing politicians to see the will of the people (and most people do want climate action now) - can be hard to beat.
I think there could be something better than Twitter at sharing this information, but in terms of critical mass and also precedent (e.g., arab spring), there's a strong case for it.”
Thibaut Monfort Micheo, Cofounder @ FlexSea (seaweed-based packaging)
“I think that infrastructure technologies are the enablers of any subsequent technologies.
It starts with material streams and facilities to handle them. Then, I would say hardware and politics (laws, bans, taxes, restrictions, etc.) have to be on the same level as they propose the actual solutions to mitigate climate change and allow them to be put in action on the large scale (state/europe, etc). Finally, software allows the management of KPIs to monitor the evolution of the hardware and improve it.
To put my words in a concrete case which concerns our work at FlexSea,
In the sourcing we need more infrastructure for seaweed cultivation in the world, this will enable farming of more material, handling and extraction, then the hardware tech like bioplastics formulations, refineries for biomolecules comes second and pushes/justifies governments to make seaweed farming even bigger, finally software monitoring of production volumes, management of waste and impact on the ecosystem comes in; and in.
The end of life, it is primordial to have waste management infrastructure, sorting facilities, composting industries, to then get the materials treated, and software comes to monitor it.”
Saurabh Kumar, Senior Analyst @ Katapult VC
"Blockchain.
The major source of carbon emission are the big industries. The path they choose to become climate friendly is to offset carbon by investing in different carbon positive projects. This offsetting behavior has also been integrated at the micro consumption level of human beings.
Through specialized blockchains and increasing the awareness about it at the micro level, we can make these projects verifiable so that no penny spent by the people or company is spent on projects that didn’t actually bring any carbon positive impact to the world.
Also worth considering is:
Carbon capture or carbon sequestration tech.
No matter how much we talk about limiting our consumption or offsetting our carbon footprint, we will need to sequester carbon in one way or the other. Right now, the penetration of carbon sequestration tech in the market is very very low.
We need to be innovative in finding different ways of [sequestering carbon] so that we can not only capture as much carbon away from the atmosphere as possible, but also bring it to a great use."