I’ve been thinking about a tweet I saw from Bill Clerico recently:

”’Climate is the trend… but the draw for founders is that some of the largest markets in the world are being transformed. Energy, Real Estate, Construction, Insurance, Food, Transportation. All largely untouched by technology to date. The scale is mind boggling & exciting.”

As I go through my own journey of exploring opportunities, I’ve often used “climate” or “sustainability” as a filter for what’s exciting and important, but Bill’s tweet touches on something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently: this recent mega-trend of climate tech and excitement about the space is just another way of describing an ambition to fundamentally change so many industries. Climate action should be synonymous with societal progress.

This also means that we can (and should) celebrate climate action in specific sectors as broader transformation of those areas. Right now, there are incredible organisations - for-profit, non-profit, and in government - trying to redefine and transform our energy system, transportation system, agricultural system, and political system, all for the better. Solving climate change is the impetus to do so, but what we get out of it is progress in a much broader sense.

That’s all to say that while it’s easy to find framings of climate action as giving things up (degrowth narratives, etc), whether we give things up or not, the ultimate outcome will be a net gain for all of us. In the long term, we’re not sacrificing anything.