We couldn’t be more excited to have you with us.

As a reminder, optimism isn’t about blind faith; it’s about choosing action over despair. It’s about seeing the scale of the challenge and deciding to meet it anyway. That’s why we started this newsletter—to cut through the noise, call out what’s broken, and celebrate the solutions that are already making a difference.

This space is for sharp commentary, bold ideas, and real progress. We’ll have our Meltdowns—because some things deserve it—but we’ll also spotlight the people, policies, and innovations proving that a better future isn’t just possible, it’s already in motion.

If there’s something you think deserves a look, let us know. And in the meantime, keep doing what you’re doing to drive the clean economy forward, build resilience, and rewrite the future in real time.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Curated finds from around the web

This year’s Climate Tech Investment Trends report from Sightline Climate shows a new normal. Solar, wind, and batteries are “graduating” to private equity and project finance, and VCs and growth put their dollars into clean fuels, industrial decarb, and SMRs. Venture and growth deal count is flat, dollar amounts were overall lower, and energy came out on top with $9.4B of the overall $30B invested.

Nat Bullard does his annual presentation on decarbonization. The 200 slides with trends charts are worth a skim. If you’re looking for the “good news”, check out solar and wind growth on 25, clean energy trade measures on 29, annual energy transition investment on 43, EV sales on 116, and AI load growth on 167.

Like us, your friends and family might ask you what they personally can do on climate change. The short answer is to stop eating meat and cheese; the longer answer is to vote for political candidates that put forward climate positive-policies.    

If you’ve been tracking AI’s impacts on energy load growth, you know it’s been trending in the wrong direction. Turns out, there’s another answer besides investing in SMRs: improving the efficiency of AI processing.

THE MELTDOWN

Climate Change is Moving Fast—Optimism Has to Move Faster

Between 1980 and 2024, the U.S. averaged nine climate disasters per year, each costing more than $1 billion. In the last five years? That number jumped to 23. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates that unchecked climate change will cost us hundreds of billions annually—on top of the $2.9 trillion in damages we’ve already absorbed.

The TL;DR? Climate change isn’t a future problem. It’s happening. The fight to slow it down through mitigation and the scramble to deal with its impacts through adaptation are now running in parallel—and moving faster than most models predicted.

We learned this firsthand last month when we were both evacuated by the Eaton and Palisades firestorms. Climate change made these fires 25% worse, according to the data. But if you’ve ever fled a wildfire with smoke in your lungs and an evacuation notice buzzing on your phone, you don’t need the numbers to tell you something’s off. And while most people wouldn’t take that as a sign to start a newsletter about climate optimism, here we are.

So, what do we do about it? Although average global temperatures are rising faster than expected, so too is the transition away from fossil fuels. The clean energy transition is scaling at rates that looked laughably ambitious just a few years ago. We need that to accelerate.

A bright spot in climate mitigation this year has been seeing S-curve adoption of cleantech become an X pattern: renewables, electrification, and efficiency are way out performing what fossil fuel incumbents expected and showing a much faster transition to a clean economy than predicted.

Adaptation is where we’re still pretending we have more time than we do. However, we have the foundation in place to begin. The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, launched back in 2013, had partnered with cities to produce resilience policy roadmaps. The L.A. Firestorms showed us that even the best laid resilience plans are outdated the moment they’re finalized. And fire-fighting technologies, like the Super Scoopers and non-toxic class A foam, and fire-resistant building design, like steel roofs and adobe walls, need to be rapidly scaled up. In fact, we need more than $400 billion per year for adaptation and resilience to avoid a “come Hell and high water” future.

We can do it - but, it will mean realizing that we can’t just build back, we have to build the right way before the next disaster forces our hand. If you have ideas, share them in the comments!

Related: What Can We Learn From Mexico City as it Rebuilds from Earthquakes (Forbes); Restoring City-owned infrastructure through the FEMA Public Assistance Program (The City of Asheville)

DETOURS

NFL players are feeling the heat, with games and training camps getting a major overhaul to adapt. Meanwhile, the league’s new playbook: dodge hurricanes, wildfires, and heatwaves — all before halftime.

VIBES