All we want for our sustainable future is…
This month marked the close of COP27 in Egypt, the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference. The close of COP is always a bit of a high/low in the climate world — high because we have to be optimistic about the progress delivered by the global gatherings, low because there’s usually some counterbalancing force that pulls the progress back. Some good news from this COP is that a final agreement was reached to develop a loss and damages fund whereby the richest countries would compensate developing countries to ease the financial burden of being the most acutely affected by climate disasters … though the most contentious components of the agreement won’t be ironed out until the next COP. It’s also worth noting that there was an explosion in the number of oil and gas lobbyists with 636 in attendance, “a rise of more than 25% from last year and outnumbering any one frontline community affected by the climate crisis,” according to the Guardian.
Al Gore opened the conference and surely many of you (like us) remember the moment you saw An Inconvenient Truth for the first time. Perhaps the film was an awakening for you like it was for many on our team. Just as he did in the 2006 documentary, Gore delivered sobering truth bombs at the conference — including highlighting the 600K Hiroshima bombs’ equivalent of heat that humanity emits PER DAY, backing his claim that we "treat our atmosphere like an open sewer”.
But Al Gore also listed some incredible progress that should be celebrated: 90% of all new energy installed last year was renewable, solar is now the cheapest power in history and renewable energy nets 3X more jobs than oil and gas. The environmental transition underway holds the biggest opportunity ever. The narrative of mitigating and adapting to climate change needs to be about all the benefits — all the cool, star trek-esque progress that will come along with our sustainable future. Our team is especially lucky in that we get to see innovation as part of our everyday business, so we want to share a couple highlights that are especially cool … like a wish list for the net-zero reality that is within reach:
Seaweed supplements that reduce cattle methane emissions
Net-negative concrete made with algae that sucks carbon out of the air
Affordable family cars that have a solar panel shell to self-charge in the sun
Coding seed DNA with sensors so plants can communicate their nutrient needs
3D printing any inventoried part locally and automatically with zero waste
Lab cultivated fungi to break down waste
Symbiotic fungi in tree root systems to increase growth rates
Using microbubbles in farm irrigation systems to more efficiently deliver nutrients