It's a wonderful impact
RC #51: Our power lies within the collective, not the individual
I’m still working through the final essay of my four-part series on rare earths. It may end up my longest post yet, so stay tuned for that.
Today, I’d like to touch on a subject which has nagged at me throughout the year, but to which I have not dedicated a post.
Several years ago, some of the prominent voices in the climate world decided to set rules for what they considered “impactful,” and therefore worthy of investment. Here’s an example:
“We invest in science-driven companies with the potential to cut at least 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions—about half a gigaton per year—across the five sectors driving the climate challenge: manufacturing, electricity, agriculture, transportation and buildings.”
Statements like this coincided roughly with the beginning of the “Climate tech 2.0” era. The goals were well-intentioned, and when you consider how the titans of industry running and / or funding the VC scene have made their fortunes – tech from the 70s through the 10s – they make sense. Companies like Microsoft, Intel, Google, and Tesla (the list could go on for a while) not only outmaneuvered incumbents, but created entirely new industries. Having a viable (or just theoretical) pathway to mitigating one percent of global emissions shouldn’t be too much to ask for, right?
When dealing with large-scale infrastructure in the physical world, it really might be too much to ask for. This is especially true given that decarbonization innovators are essentially trying to make market returns (or better) by doing the exact opposite thing the market has done for the past 200+ years: emit greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Here are just a few anecdotes to put the one percent, or “half gigaton,” figure into perspective:
Aluminum smelting emits around 270 million tons of GHGs annually. If a company can completely decarbonize this process and nothing else, do they not have a great enough potential impact to be investable?
The U.K. emitted just under 400 million tons of GHGs in 2024. If we can completely decarbonize the U.K. (including its 36 gigawatts of remaining fossil fuel power generation), is that not impactful enough?
ExxonMobil emitted just over half a gigaton (562 million tons) of CO2-equivalent in 2023, the most of any investor-owned oil and gas company in the world. Apparently, zeroing out these emissions is hardly worth a look?
I understand that funders just needed some metrics to point to, and one percent of global emissions may have just felt right. Honestly, it’s tough to argue with that. But that line of thinking is at best misguided and at worst downright harmful. What happens when Company A has a one percent chance to mitigate one billion tons of GHGs per year and Company B has a 50 percent chance to mitigate 200 million tons of GHGs per year? From a weighted average perspective, Company B is 10 times more impactful than Company A, but the conventional wisdom might prioritize Company A over Company B.
Plus, no company out there has any realistic chance at mitigating one percent of global emissions, anyway. I’d bet no company will approach this figure unless A) they are a massive state-owned company (e.g. Aramco) or the West completely abandons anti-trust law. After all, ExxonMobil hardly emits half a gigaton per year.
This all leads me to the inspiration for today’s post: It’s a Wonderful Life.
The 1946 film is a timeless Christmas classic that chronicles the life of George Bailey, a building & loan manager in upstate New York, who contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve 1945. After his guardian angel shows him vignettes of all the people he’s positively influenced throughout his life and reveals what life in Bedford Falls would have been like if he’d never been born, George changes his mind and runs home to embrace his family in one of cinema’s more heartwarming scenes. It really is a wonderful movie and is worth all 131 minutes of runtime.
I’d like to introduce the “Wonderful Life” corollary to the conventional wisdom around climate impact:
Let’s say you work in anything at all related to climate. If you had never been born, there would be precisely zero negative climate impact because of your absence.
I know, it’s a tough pill to swallow. And it applies to everyone, even the biggest names in climate innovation. Whether you prefer Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jigar Shah, Bill McKibben, or somebody else, the result would be the same: Remove any one of them from the equation, and nothing changes with regard to the actual impact we’ve made on our atmosphere. We’ve warmed the Earth by around 1.42 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, and this number would be no different if we removed any individual from the decarbonization movement.
Although the scale of the problem we’re talking about is massive, this isn’t really a commentary on scale. The point is that there’s no going halfway. Either we decarbonize our economy and continue to build a more prosperous world, or we don’t. Neither result is inevitable.
But just as George Bailey realizes his life is what it is because of the community around him – they’ve made him who he is and he’s made them who they are – those who work in decarbonization must realize the same thing. As individual players, we are replaceable. As a team, though, we are not. Each one of us makes up an infinitesimal impact, if any impact at all, but the point is that we’re all doing it together. Millions of infinitesimal impacts can add up to one huge impact, even if none of those individual impacts is “giga” scale.
What’s the lesson here?
As humbling as it may sound, none of us is as important as we think we are, except in the roles we play within our communities, our teams, our tribes.
So, this holiday season, I implore you: Sit back, eat some ham, drink some eggnog, and damn it, forget about your climate imperatives for a day or two.
Be with your people; be with your team. When it comes down to it, isn’t that what matters most, anyway?
Rock ‘n’ roll afterword
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in Renaissance Carbon are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any employer.
Contact: ryandavidson911@gmail.com