By Molly Wood
Here’s an unpopular opinion in some circles: We are going to have to use technology to adapt to the worst effects of climate change.
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But adaptation has, in climate circles, been a taboo topic for many years, because some see it as surrender. Al Gore, in 1992, called adaptation “a kind of laziness.” It’s like saying we’ve lost, and the best we can do now is hunker down and hope to save as many as we can. And I can see why that’s depressing—but it’s also true. By 2013, in fact, in his book Earth in the Balance, Gore said pursuing adaptation alongside mitigation is “a moral imperative.”
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Now investors, academics, and entrepreneurs are taking baby steps toward a nanotech-enabled, climate-proof future. At the moment, this looks like precision drip irrigation that preserves water in newly drought-stricken farms; sophisticated algorithms for trying to understand massive data models of climate change, which can be used to precisely target risk for building owners and real estate developers; a startup that makes solar-powered, internet-connected panels that distill clean drinking water out of water vapor, so any home or school or building can be independent of a water utility.
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But venture capital firms and private investors are starting to notice that climate adaptation is both an opportunity and an imperative. Although only about 5 to 6 percent of total climate-related investment is in adaptation, that number must grow. One investor called climate adaptation “the greatest entrepreneurial challenge of our time.”
Other money is coming. In October, a Global Commission on Adaptation was formed, led by Bill Gates, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva; the World Bank pledged $200 billion to support it. Like climate change, adaptation is here.
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