#124: My 6 insights at Climate Week NYC 🌎

+ climate tech snobbery, the PANAS personality test, power of positive assumptions

Sep 26, 2023

Good morning, folks.

In today’s 2-minute read, we’ll cover these 4 nuggets below — as delightful as a sunny September in NYC’s Madison Square Park.

Climate Startups & Investment:

#1 — 🏢 My 6 insights from Climate Week NYC
#2 — 🙄 Don’t be too pious when promoting climate tech

Productivity & Leadership:

#3 — 💯 Take this personality test: PANAS
#4 — 📏What if you assumed the best (not the worst)?

Onward and upward,

Chris

P.S. Want more? Read 120+ prior newsletter issues here.

#1 — 🏢 My 6 insights from Climate Week NYC

First, it was so nice to meet many of you newsletter readers in NYC — Daniel, Peter, Ed, Cindy, Jane, and so many more! 🙏

OK, here is a super short version of my much longer notes:

The enthusiasm around climate tech startups and investment this year was 20x the power and density of last year. Next year, I’ll probably attend all five days.
“The era of the climate scientist is over. It’s now the era of the climate storyteller and climate salesman.” — Provocative! While not entirely true, the last half is. To mainstream this stuff, we all need to use more stories and talk of co-benefits (e.g., jobs, health) versus relying on data and a climate focus alone.
“95% of all GHG emissions between now and 2100 will come from outside the U.S.” — While the U.S. is a big player and our actions have ripple effects beyond our borders, the real work is to be done overseas. Thanks to friends like Nicole Poindexter, CEO at Energicity, who are blazing this trail.
“We’re lucky to be alive now in order to have a fighting chance to reverse the worst of climate change.” — As daunting as it can feel sometimes to do this hard work right now, it would be much worse to fast forward 50 years where our ability to make changes was smaller and even harder.
“The Department of Energy proposes that Adoption Readiness Levels (ARL) should be a new measure to complement Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) metrics.” — Good idea. Once a project achieves TRL 9 (top of the scale for new tech), it’s not yet bankable at scale for project financiers.
JUST Climate, a $1.5B private equity fund by Generation Investment, will focus on industrial climate solutions and have 100% of its fund manager profit share (aka, carried interest, promote) tied to hitting climate metrics, not just financial metrics.” — This is huge and should make all fund managers quiver.

#2 — 🙄 Don’t be too pious when promoting climate tech

As we’re out spreading the gospel according to climate tech, we gotta be careful to not sound like Mr. Broflovski in South Park.

If you haven’t watched this, you’ll laugh.

If you drive a Tesla, you might laugh harder.

#3 — 💯 Take this personality test: PANAS

Who’s ready to geek out on another personality test?

Megan, I’m talking to you. (And me.) 😄

Here it is — The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, PANAS.

(And no, this is not a test to see whether you just read “Pain in Me Arse” on accident.)

It measures how we process negative and positive emotions and events (says this non-psychologist).

Social scientist Arthur Brooks organizes the scores into four personality types. Take the test and view yours here. See below.

Is one better than the other? No.

Is it good for all your executive team to score the same? Heck no.

Repeat after me: Balance, my friend.

#4 — 📏What if you assumed the best (not the worst)?

According to the National Science Foundation, the odds are against us being optimistic:

80% of our thoughts are negative. 95% of our thoughts are repetitive.

Yikes.

But what if we chose the opposite?

When we have misunderstandings with peers, what if we assumed the best (e.g., “He’s dealing with an ailing parent, and, therefore, late on his work”) vs. the worst (e.g., He’s a total slacker with no regard for my time)?