This is exciting to see. Like it or not, we live in a market-driven society, and the biggest climate solutions will ultimately be market based. If business isn't on board, it won't happen.

Make no mistake, the government is going to have to do a lot, too. The single biggest intervention the government can make, according to the IPCC[1] is to set a high price on carbon emissions. And one of the closest times that the economics profession has come to a consensus is when thousands of economists signed a statement[2] that the most effective way to price carbon is to put a high, steadily increasing price on it, give it back to people as dividends, and use a carbon border adjustment to maintain trade competitiveness. This approach is called carbon fee and dividend [3], or sometimes just "carbon dividends".

MIT built a climate policy simulator[4] called EN-ROADS that lets you move sliders to see what moves the needle most in terms of energy mix, and by extension global average temperature above pre-industrial average by the end of the century. It's hard to get anything real to happen without moving the Carbon price slider.

We need to pass carbon fee and dividend legislation at the national level. The legislation that has so far gained the most traction is the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act [5], but ultimately we just need something that actually solves this problem while being fair to people and good (or at least not bad) for business. It also needs to be as bipartisan as possible so that it doesn't get tossed around every time there's a shift in administrations.

The bottom line is that there's a cost to society from continuing to use fossil fuels, and that cost should be reflected in energy prices from carbon-intensive sources. That cost is currently reflected as $0, despite the billions of dollars in damage that climate impacts will have on our economy, according to the 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment[5], a massive and rigorous report from more than 300 experts and 13 federal agencies.

We have to supercharge capital investments into the future of clean tech. VC funding like Lowercarbon Capital is part of that, but we also need carbon dividends to greatly multiply that effect.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/climate/carbon-tax-united... [2] https://econstatement.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/climate/carbon-tax-united... [4] https://energyinnovationact.org/ [5] https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/