5 promising factors propelling climate action | Gabriel Kra

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Given the scale of the challenge, the conversation around climate change is often tinged with doom and gloom. But climate tech investor Gabriel Kra thinks we need to reframe the crisis as a source of tremendous opportunity. He offers five big reasons to be optimistic about climate -- starting with the fact that many of the world's best minds are focused and working on building a clean future for all.

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Given the scale of the challenge, so often the conversation around climate change is a lot of doom and dread. But climate tech investor, Gabriel Kraz, says instead of thinking of climate change as a big problem to solve, it's worth reframing it as a business opportunity.
0:23.3	He lays out why from the stage of the Countdown Summit in 2021.
0:29.3	We need to change the way we think about the climate challenge.
0:34.7	Because things are different this time.
0:41.7	We need to stop thinking about it just as a problem,
0:48.7	which it obviously is, and start thinking about it as an opportunity which will motivate us to solve it. I'm a venture investor. I invest in early stage companies and technologies, and I see tremendous
0:58.1	opportunities in solving climate change. That said, we've been here before, and it's different this time.
1:08.0	We can reduce net emissions to zero, and that was not obvious even just 10 years ago.
1:15.5	Why do I think it's different? Because we have cheaper inputs. We have better technologies.
1:23.1	We have better policies. We have a better sense of urgency.
1:29.9	And most important of all, we have even better people working on it.
1:36.7	I'm from Silicon Valley, and you can laugh or shrug if you think that the valley is more
1:42.2	part of the problem than part of the solution.
1:45.2	But consider this. If we want to succeed, we have to act at such a truly massive scale.
1:52.3	We need the best investors and entrepreneurs on our team.
1:57.8	And it's a fact that some 15 years ago, a bunch of us started working on technologies and companies that could help solve climate change.
2:07.7	And we had some successes in solar and in wind, in electric vehicles, in transportation.
2:16.0	But accelerated by the Great Recession of 2008, climate tech, clean tech,
2:23.0	came to be seen as a string of investment failures. I don't think we failed. We were a little bit
2:30.1	early and a little bit naive. We didn't have all those building blocks. Not enough of us
2:36.3	knew that solving climate change was the greatest business opportunity of our generation.
2:42.0	And we were a little bit naive. We underestimated how hard it was going to be to disrupt
	...

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