Humans have an innate desire to name things, but to be honest, we're not always good at it.
Take climate tech: this is a category of companies and technologies that, broadly speaking, seek to minimize or reverse our impact on the climate while helping us adapt to its increasing changes. In terms of terms, climate technology is actually not bad since it defines the direction of the sector in two words.
It's certainly better than its predecessor, clean technology. That’s what the startups that fall under the climate tech umbrella today would probably have called themselves a little over a decade ago. That wasn't a very good descriptor, though. For the uninitiated, clean technology could just as easily have meant robot vacuum cleaners or new household items. Climate technology is much easier to understand.
But climate technology has been around for about a decade, and humans also like to feel like they're at the forefront of something new. Added to this is the fact that the scope of climate technology has expanded to the point of becoming a bit cumbersome. Some began to explore alternatives over the past year.
Planetary health emerged as one of the first alternatives, invented for the first time in the medical journal The Lancet in 2014. Some investors I kissed himin part to solve the problem of scope creep. Many companies are not looking to tackle carbon pollution, but are still focusing on technologies that would reduce humanity's impact on the planet. This has its appeal, but most people stick with climate technology.
Then Donald Trump was elected a second time. The word “climate” hasn't exactly become a dirty word, but people are actively talking about it. distance oneself of the term. You can try to fight it if you want, but the migration had actually started before the elections. In five years we will call climate technology something else entirely.
What will it be? People started throwing things at the wall to see what stuck. Planetary health is an obvious alternative; it's descriptive and has a first clue. THE American dynamism The platform contains a clean energy plank, but that term is associated with only one venture capital firm – a16z, whose partner Katherine Boyle invented it and runs a practice under that name – and it contains a lot of other things, including defense, public safety. , education, housing and much more.
Cutting-edge technology is another, but if you thought climate technology was too broad, you definitely won't like the scope of this technology. Critical infrastructure? This intersects with climate technology, but the Venn diagram is not a perfect circle. Deep technology is another one that encompasses climate technology, but involves much more than AI, robotics, and quantum computing.
The most recent proposal was growth technology. It's not my intention to throw stones, but I just don't see it catching on. It's too generic: Aren't all venture capital-funded startups looking for growth? – and that doesn’t capture the essence of what these startups are asking for. Is it likely that climate technology will trigger a wave of industrial growth and innovation? You don't have to look much further than China to understand this. But I think there are better conditions.
Since I'm not one to criticize without offering a solution, here's mine: If we really need a term, I'm going to suggest resilience technology. It's not perfect and I'll probably think of something better in the future. But for now, I think it will be fine. It captures the essence of the goal of climate technology: to make the world and humanity more resilient.
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