Climate Of The Apes

If you want to understand climate change in 2026, you need to know these 4 things: 🧵

1. Earth systems such as ice sheets, permafrost, ocean currents, sea ice, coral reefs, and overall Earth reflectivity (albedo) are all at risk of near to medium term destabilization in irreversible ways that would have enormous consequences for billions of people.

2. Human systems such as food systems, migration, and insurance markets would all be hit by the destabilization of these Earth systems, and collapse of any of these could derail our societal capacity to even continue efforts at mitigation/decarbonization.

3. There are different interventions proposed to reduce these risks which exist at different stages of research and development, and all of them are too small in current scope relative to the impact size of the risks they propose to address.

4. The people working on these interventions need: a. A rapid increase in funding for research and development, including techno-economic feasibility and engineering b. A rapid increase in the number of people available and interested to work on these problems (who require funding) c. Policy and governance support for conducting research and outdoor field experiments

.@susanfsu and I just launched Tail Risk, a new podcast about Earth systems stabilization, what the risks are, what's going on to reduce those risks, and most importantly, how the heck are we going to pay for any of this and make it happen? In finance, a tail risk is an outcome that's unlikely but would be catastrophic if it happened. A lot of what we talk about fits that description, though some of it is becoming more likely every year. IMO the prime directive in stabilization is always approaching the subject from a risk-first framing, because the interventions sound kind of crazy and undesirable if you consider them on their own, and they only start to make sense as possibilities once you understand what happens if one of these systems tips over. Susan is a climate investor who writes the Climate Money newsletter, and we've known each other for years, since I was running Nori. She was a regular panelist on our Carbon Removal Newsroom show back then, so I'm excited to be working on this project with her. If you already work in this area, I hope this show becomes an easy way for you to keep up with what's happening across the field. And if you're coming from finance or insurance and trying to figure out how seriously to take any of it, I think you'll get a lot out of it too. Our first episode is a debrief of the Global Risk and Stabilization Summit in Reykjavík, where it felt like stabilization is starting to become a real field, even if the money going into it is still small compared to the risks. We plan to release new episodes every two weeks, and we hope you subscribe! Links in reply 👇