🌏 800 climate resilience companies | Advice from $49B asset manager | 22 ways to create a "flow state"
+ No pressure, no diamonds
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Climate Startups + Investors
1.
800 public companies in the business of climate resilience.
Climate adaptation and resilience are the unfortunate black sheep of climate finance.
At NYC Climate Week, I learned about a new investor toolkit for these sectors:
I learned about this investor toolkit on the topic:
Its AI-powered framework identified over 800 publicly traded companies in this space.
It reframes how investors can approach this field:
“It's not only a cost for governments to bear. It's also a growth industry for products and services we'll need more of on a warming planet.”
This work is a collaboration among:
Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment Group (GARI)
MSCI Sustainability Institute
The Lightsmith Group
Bezos Earth Fund
ClimateWorks Foundation
The panelists laser-focused on this field included:
SJF Ventures (sustainable investor on their fifth fund)
Marsh (#1 global insurance broker)
The Lightsmith Group (private equity for resilience and sustainability)
Rhizome (AI-powered software for utilities’ distribution grid reliability)
Salient Predictions (multi-week advanced weather forecasting)
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2.
Climate advice from a manager with $48B of assets
Laura Craft is an SVP at Heitman, a real estate investment manager with $49B in assets.
She was also a repeat guest speaker in my ESG Investing course at Duke University last week.
We discussed climate risk, insurance, and macro drivers of responsible investing.
But she also noted this climate resilience strategy that they’re pursuing:
Putting the mechanicals on roofs
What’s this?
Putting your HVAC equipment on the roof, not in basements or the first floor.
In doing so, flooding can't damage the equipment. This means that buildings can continue heating, cooling, and dehumidifying during severe weather.
What’s my point?
All climate solutions don’t need VC investment, startup risk, and a decade of trial and error.
Personal Growth => Business Growth
3.
No pressure, no diamonds.
You’ve heard the analogy before.
Over millions of years, intense heat and pressure can turn carbon into diamonds.
Similarly, the intensity and stress in sports and business can improve our skills and performance.
But there’s always another way.
This doesn’t mean we all must endure constant stress and pressure to reach our peak.
Let’s take the analogy in another direction to illustrate this.
Diamonds can also be created when:
The graphite in a meteoring strikes the Earth. It undergoes extreme heat, creating rare diamonds called lonsdaleite. This occurs in minutes, not millions of years.
Using "chemical vapor deposition," carbon captured from the atmosphere can become lab-grown diamonds.
There’s always another way.
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4.
22 ways to create a “flow state” of super productivity
First, what is the flow state?
The “Dorky PhD” definition:
— A cognitive condition that is marked by deep focus, loss of time awareness, and diminished self-consciousness. It occurs when task difficulty and personal skill are in equilibrium. This leads to peak performance.
The “friends at a cafe” version:
— When you're so into what you're doing that you forget everything else. It all clicks into place effortlessly. You’re become as productive as a caffeinated elf in the North Pole.
How do you create it?
I won’t list all 22 triggers. But here’s a detailed summary.
Examples include autonomy, challenge-skill ratio, immediate feedback, and spite. (Yes, you read that last one right).
These come from Stevek Kotler, author of The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
(I tried to read this on my way home from NYC Climate Week. But the “morning meditation unfriendly” late nights had other plans for me.)
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That’s all, y’all.
Make it a great week because it’s usually a choice.
~ Chris
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