😲 $22T climate bubble (or not) | 90% of value linked to intangible assets | Solutions to eco-anxiety
Plus, only 5 seats left in our final Climate Mastermind cohort, climate tech to create 8 more Teslas (Gates), MC Hammer pants, box breathing, and everything is your fault
Good morning my ZERO peeps,
Before you hop in, I’ll offer this quick public service announcement, if you’ll indulge me:
Carving out time to be quiet for longer periods, ideally around green stuff, may be just what the doctor (should have) ordered.
Huh?
I’m just back from a three-day solo retreat in a tiny house in the North Carolina mountains.
Until now, this was a once-in-seventeen-year phenomenon (yep, our oldest is 16).
But with the recharge and clarity, I’m hoping that this deep dive into silence, reading, hiking, meditating, writing, and two local breweries will come around more often. (And ditto for my wife’s overseas visits to see her family in Africa and Europe!)
— Chris
📉 A climate bubble: Really?
If you’ve seen valuations and investment rounds increase 2-4x in the last 2-3 years, then you know what I’m writing about.
But — pardon me while I use a sports reference — are we in the…
9th inning (i.e., a bubble)?
1st inning (i.e., this show is just getting started)?
Minor leagues (i.e., there are climate unicorns as far as the eye can see)?
Below are four recent articles relating to this buzzword, plus a blast from the distant past on this topic from January of this year.
Climate Change Is the New Dot-Com Bubble — Wired
Their subtitle says it well, reflecting on the losses from cleantech version 1.0: “The free market has plenty of grandiose ideas about how to fix our broken planet. There's just one problem: We can't afford another bust.”
Worries of the tech boom-and-bust are hopefully irrelevant: “If history repeats itself, then we aren't at the precipice of a new era. We're at the beginning of a bubble.”
I think the author (who’s not from the climate space) is reading different things than I am: “But the funding thins out quickly. It's easy for investors to get distracted; there are just so many butter knives we could wield against the dragon of global collapse.”
COP26 and the climate finance bubble — Pitchbook
There’s no mention of “bubble” in the body of the article. Sooooo, not much of a bubble?
We’re almost there? — “Existing technologies combined with sufficient climate finance can reduce up to 65% of the emissions needed to reach the UN's net-zero target by 2050.”
Nope, we have a ways to go: “The remaining 35% of emission reductions will require technological breakthroughs, according to a report from Boston Consulting Group. This will require roughly $3 to $5 trillion annually.” (Audible gulp.)
Climate tech as a gnat on an elephant: “Even though climate tech venture capital has seen a tremendous influx in 2021—reaching $30.8 billion YTD, 30% more than the total in 2020—much more private capital needs to be invested through flexible and patient channels…PitchBook data shows that venture capital comprises roughly 3-5% of total climate finance.”
Al Gore warns of a $22 trillion ‘subprime carbon bubble’ — Al Jazeera
Oh snap, look at this jujitsu move: “We now have a subprime carbon bubble of $22 trillion, based on an absurd assumption that all of those carbon fuels are going to be burned. They’re not going to be, especially because the new renewable sources of electricity are much cheaper now.” — Climate OG Al Gore
At COP26, more investors saw the light: Via the “Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, firms representing $130 trillion in assets have now committed to net-zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.”
Bill Gates says climate tech will produce 8 to 10 Tesla’s, a Google, an Amazon, and a Microsoft — CNBC
Hooray! But… — “While Gates is bullish on the sector, he said that a lot of money will get washed away, just as did when the internet bubble popped, adding that today it’s ‘like the early days of software and computing.’”
We need risk-tolerance and time: “Somebody who can’t afford risk or if you expect near term returns, then I would look elsewhere,” Gates said.
We Have Entered the Climate Decade: A long boom of climate tech is just getting started — World Positive (Andrew Beebe)
Hi, Andrew. :)
With 120+ hyperlinks to headlines, people, and companies making climate solutions a reality, he lays out five reasons why this time is different — and should be more financially successful — than cleantech version 1.0.
🔨 Intangible value: “You can’t touch this.”
(Go ahead. Indulge in that MC Hammer’s 1990 hit song and his super fly pants.)
As we think about creating value in our climate tech companies, it’s helpful to see how the sources of value creation are changing among the big boys and girls on the S&P 500.
Through the clever work of the Visual Capitalist, note how intangibles like patents, brand, software, and customer data have come to make up 90% of company value last year. #NotCommonKnowledge
😞 Solutions to your “eco-anxiety”?
The 10% Happier podcast recently had an enlightening episode “Reducing Eco-Anxiety.”
What the heck is that?
The American Psychological Association defines it as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” Yikes.
And last year over 50% of Americans said they were somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change.
So, what do we do about it?
Option #1
Get our asses to work on systemic change (e.g., politics, finance, etc.).
And worry less about whether it’s better to waste more water cleaning out the plastic jar to recycle it, or just throw it away. (#TeenagerTalksLastWeek)
Option #2
Try “box breathing.”
Here’s the skinny.
4 seconds — Breathe in
4 seconds — Hold your breath
4 seconds — Breathe out
4 seconds — Hold your breath
Repeat
And boom! Back to lower blood pressure...sometimes.
Here’s more on the benefits of box breathing from Healthline —
According to the Mayo Clinic, there’s sufficient evidence that intentional deep breathing can actually calm and regulate the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This system regulates involuntary body functions such as temperature.
It can lower blood pressure and provide an almost immediate sense of calm. The slow holding of breath allows CO2 to build up in the blood. An increased blood CO2 enhances the cardio-inhibitory response of the vagus nerve when you exhale and stimulates your parasympathetic system. This produces a calm and relaxed feeling in the mind and body.
Box breathing can reduce stress and improve your mood. That makes it an exceptional treatment for conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression.
It can also help treat insomnia by allowing you to calm your nervous system at night before bed. Box breathing can even be efficient at helping with pain management.
⛰️ Climate Mastermind: Only 5 seats remaining for Q1 2022.
We interrupt your normal programming for this brief climate commercial.
As you may know, our business at Entrepreneurs for Impact is not focused on writing newsletters or creating podcasts. (But we love both.)
Instead, it’s about growing the only private executive mastermind community for CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change.
We’re on a mission to help “scale up” climate leaders supercharge their impacts, grow their business, expand their network, crowdsource new ideas, assess financing opportunities, reach their full leadership potential, find work-life balance, and not be so lonely at the top.
Our invite-only cohorts of 11 executives each share best practices via monthly meetings, annual retreats, a member-only Climate Investor Database, and 1:1 coaching and strategy calls.
Here are some sample CEO members. We’re at 28 highly curated executive members now, and we’re capping the entire program at 33 members. Today’s members represent over $4B in market cap and are influencing corporate priorities and infrastructure much bigger than that.
More importantly, they’re great human beings. (That is, a benevolent and exponential extrapolation of the “no a**hole rule.”)
Our Masterminds are not for everyone, but our ideal candidates...
Are pursuing climate solutions on the Project Drawdown list
Are leading project development, investor-backed ($10M+), or post-revenue companies
Are serial entrepreneurs
Are investing in climate-focused companies and projects
View climate change as both a critical mission and a historic financial opportunity
Are humble, giving, and all about constant improvement in pursuit of audacious goals
(It takes just one minute.)
That’s all, folks.
Make it a great week, because it’s usually a choice.
— Chris
👈 P.S. “Everything is my fault.”
— From Tom Bilyeu, the former founder of health unicorn Quest Nutrition and podcast host of the ever-interesting Impact Theory. Is it 100% accurate? No. But the opposite — “It’s never my fault” — gives all of our power to someone else, to some situation outside of ourselves. I imagine this might come in handy in your next team meeting where fingers are pointing every which way. (OK, don’t linger here too long. Let’s put the patchouli away and get back to tackling climate change.)
—
Dr. Chris Wedding
Founder and Chief Catalyst, Entrepreneurs for Impact
The Only Private Executive Mastermind Community for CEOs, Founders, and Investors Fighting Climate Change
