More than 4,500 climate tech investors, government officials, tech leaders, activists, artists and researchers from around the world are gathering in Seattle this week for the inaugural Bloomberg Green Festival.
While the four-day summit highlights positive themes such as innovating solutions, having impact, and building community, many of the presentations on Thursday wrestled with what some dubbed “the specter” of a second Trump administration and his pledges to undo Biden administration policies that have energized the U.S. climate response.
“The climate stakes of this election could not be higher,” said Sally Jewell, former CEO of REI and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior. “To go backwards is not acceptable for the planet, and I can’t say enough about the importance of continuing the progress that has been made over the last three years.”
A backdrop of record-setting hot temperatures in Western Washington and across the Western U.S. this week offered a tangible reminder of the crisis.
The event, taking place primarily at McCaw Hall at the Seattle Center, ends Saturday. The festival includes panels, networking sessions, documentary film showings, and free outdoor performances by musicians, comedians, dancers and a drag queen.
PNW Climate Week is running simultaneously in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C. with a variety of community events.
Here are some highlights from a few of the Bloomberg panels:
Investing in Climate Tech panel with Jim Coulter, founding partner, executive chair and director for the investment firm TPG
“One thing I know from 40 years in business is nothing is linear. And there will be surprises. In fact, we should assume that there’s going to be discontinuity,” said Coulter.
That discontinuity includes the possibility for planet-changing breakthroughs in climate technologies such as fusion energy, carbon removal, carbon storage in biochar, and sources of naturally occurring hydrogen that can be used as a clean fuel.
“As I travel the climate world, I’m running into disruptions that are about to happen anytime,” he said. “I can’t yet tell you which will happen. But I would bet on the field — there are going to be discontinuities that break our way. Our goal is to position for them.”
Unique Pathways to Climate Action panel with Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, and WNBA champion Sue Bird
Amazon helped create and is a signatory of The Climate Pledge, a commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. An additional 472 entities have signed on. Hurst acknowledged that the pledge is often a leap of faith as the path to zero is almost always uncertain.
“Some of it is a bit of jumping into the fray and saying, ‘We know some of how we’re gonna get there. And also we need to partner to figure out some of the other ways in which we don’t necessarily know, and we need to change the game,'” Hurst said. “So we need to figure out how we’re going to come together and make new decisions together, put resources together. And also public-private partnerships are a big part of it.”
That includes working with cities where employees live and the companies operate, Hurst said, and helping them develop green infrastructure such as low-carbon buildings, rail systems and climate friendly commuting options.
Amazon’s carbon footprint shrank by 3% last year, the company revealed earlier this week, marking its second straight year of decline. But the Seattle-based tech giant also hinted at challenges ahead. Amazon and other big tech companies are struggling to reconcile their ambitious climate targets with surging energy demands created by the increased use of artificial intelligence and tools that incorporate it.
Electrify Your Life panel with Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist and former lawmaker, and Ari Matusiak, founder and CEO of Rewiring America
Abrams and Matusiak agreed that an essential step to increasing engagement on climate issues is to help people see how policies that make energy-efficient, low-carbon technologies affordable can improve their lives. Helping people connect those dots is also essential to building support for political candidates who spearhead policies that address global warming and make lives better, they said.
“[People] need to understand that if you vote, you get this, if you don’t vote, you lose this,” Abrams said. “And right now, people don’t know what’s at stake. And so that’s the next few months — connecting the dots between what’s at stake and what is possible.”
The Business Value of Climate conversation with Sally Jewell, former CEO of REI and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior
Jewell discussed the challenge of making businesses take climate actions in the absence of regulations. One strategy is calling attention to companies that are addressing climate change, and those that are making it worse.
“There are climate activists making people uncomfortable, and they are really, really important,” Jewell said. “There are businesses who are on the cutting-edge of this that are trying to do the right thing. There’s new ones, they deserve our support. They deserve our business. There are some bad actors — we need to let them know they’re bad actors. We need to make them feel uncomfortable.”
https://ift.tt/9CEtqMd July 12, 2024 at 05:09PM GeekWire
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