Whoosah
Post-Trump v2 Hope Dose
Fellow Climate Warriors,
First of all—a massive thank you to those who have become paid subscribers and are even gifting subscriptions to others over the past couple of weeks. I see you. It means the world as I’m going to need to transition to paid subscriptions sooner than later to keep CTC in the game. Thank you again, and I’m going to work diligently over the coming months to provide more value to you extremely valuable paid subscribers.
That being said, the outcome of the US presidential election is only going to accelerate the transformation of CTC. I want to open the platform in a way that it’s easier for others to plug in and collaborate with a win-win mentality. If that’s you, hit me up and we’ll see if there’s a there, there.
This post is an election commercial break from the tour diaries, which will include some of my takeaways from experiences traveling through the Midwest and interacting with Trump supporters—so stay tuned…
Alright, can you do something with me? Close your eyes, take a deep breath, when your lungs are full hold your breath for 5 seconds and when exhaling say “whoosahhhh”.
Yes, it’s time for a collective whoosah. That, and I’m giving you permission to do whatever you need to do to release your frustration in healthy or even unhealthy ways—Want to scream and beat the crap out of a pillow? Go for it. On a pizza & ice cream diet this week? Understandable. Rewatching mindless movies like Pineapple Express? All in. Plenty of people have written stuff the last 24 hours about moving on immediately and fighting—sure—but it’s also ok to be sad and in the moment. All that being said, and given we’re all warriors here, I thought I’d take a break from my own processing and chime in. I’ll keep it snappy, though.
Side note—please forgive me—I understand Trump becoming President again impacts everybody in many different ways, but I’m going to write from a climate, especially climate tech, lens—because, after all, this is Climate Tech Cocktails.
The world changed, yet again, yesterday. The truth is we can’t go forward expecting the status of climate tech to be the same as November 5th. I felt compelled to write something because we have a lot of new people in the industry since we transitioned from cleantech —> climate tech. We also have a lot of subscribers from outside of the US who are probably wondering what the heck is going on.
I’m not a know-it-all, but I have been working on climate tech for almost 10 years now, so I was here when Trump won the last time. Also, I informally advised the DOE during his last administration—I’m still the only non-bureaucrat Democrat I know to do so at the level I did. So hopefully my perspective carries a bit of weight. “Get to it already, Matt!”. Ok, ok, here goes.
What’s the bad news? The next administration is going to aim to get rid of the DOE’s Loan Program Office (LPO) again—maybe they’ll be successful this time around. They’ll try to gut ARPA-E. Grant funding will decline, perhaps significantly. The worst thing they could do is remove a lot of the non-political employees—the ones who make agencies hum no matter which party is in office. I’m so grateful for their service and am praying for them.
In all, it will likely be the EPA which is hardest hit—or our environmental regulations that protect health and safety. The US will almost certainly pull out of COP and any global environmental agreements, binding and non-binding, including those on biodiversity. Government funded climate change research will be slashed. Fossil fuel production, already at a record high, will increase further. Emissions will continue their upward trajectory. I hope I’m proven wrong on the above, though unlikely. Unfortunately, I’m probably missing a ton and the bad news list could go on—but we’ve been flooded by negative information, so let’s get to the other side of the coin.
The size of climate tech community is larger than the cleantech community was in 2016. There’s more brain power, money, and innovation infrastructure—not only in the US, but globally. The size and strength of the climate tech innovation ecosystem is crucial and is built to withstand political tsunamis.
Trump loves fossil fuel companies. Well, the fossils have been investing heavily in climate tech startups and venture capital funds over the past few years—more than you probably realize. They certainly don’t want to see their climate tech investments all go to zero, and should ultimately encourage the new Trump administration to pursue an “all of the above” energy strategy.
Zooming out geographically, just because the US government is going to drop the baton on climate over the next 4 years, that doesn’t mean other countries will follow suit. Also, several large US states have and will continue to drive decarbonization domestically. In fact, some if not most of the IRA should remain intact, especially considering a majority of the funding is going to red states. If I learned anything from the last Trump administration—it’s a lot harder to kill a policy once it exists, and the more one party wants to kill something, the more the other party works to save it.
Last time Trump won, people came together and in general were less competitive and more collaborative—hopefully that’s the case this time around. CTC readers know where I’m going with this…the power has and will always lie with people. Even though some Republicans literally view Democrats as “enemies”—I’ll dive more into this in a later post—it’s important not to reciprocate an allies vs enemies mentality. There is still a world where Democrats and Republicans can collaborate on climate tech—not on the surface, but behind the scenes. Sadly, in order to make such collaboration happen, it’s necessary to focus on climate tech and shelve all other issues in our communication with Republicans. i.e. approaching Republicans with a saving humanity mentality or hate in the heart because of their stance on critical social issues isn’t going to fly. I know it’s very difficult, but this is what it will take to make progress with the Trump administration.
Focus on the middle of the Venn diagram—or the role climate tech plays in economic competitiveness and national security. Shunning technologies for philosophical reasons is dumb and shouldn’t happen—walking down such a path just hands the next century to China. Climate tech is a core part of the “industries of the future” strategy and should be nurtured, not thrown out with the Biden bath water. Don’t like illegal immigration? Well...climate migration is already happening and is only going to accelerate the longer we take to fully address climate change. Want more domestic manufacturing and better paying jobs? Climate tech hardware should be incentivized to be built at home and not abroad. You see where I’m going with this…assess issues that are important to the new Trump administration and highlight opportunities where supporting climate tech is a key part of the equation, not a deterrent.
Take the above for what you will. I just thought I’d share a couple cents of what I’ve learned over the past years hoping it will be helpful for others. The truth is, after eating that Costco-sized bag of jelly beans or whatever your vice is, the sun will rise the next morning. There are so many people who care about the same things you do—spend time with them and explore where there are opportunities to collaborate to increase the size of the pie. This is the way forward.
That’s all I’ve got for my post-election hope dose.
Be a circle, not a square.
Much Love,
Matthew