Climate Change

In Kyle’s corpus climate change shows up mostly as an investing and “build” thesis rather than as a standalone science topic. It’s Time To Build (Marc Andreessen) frames it as a buildable problem: solve climate by building “a few thousand zero-emission nuclear reactors” — start with 10, then 100, then the rest. How To Avoid a Climate Disaster (Bill Gates) is the book-length version of that engineering-and-deployment lens (nuclear, TerraPower, Breakthrough Energy, the path from emissions to zero). The connective tissue across these is Decarbonization — the economy-wide mitigation lever that climate change is the problem behind.

On the deal side, climate is the thesis underneath several companies Kyle tracked: Watershed Climate (carbon accounting / Carbon Offsets) and CleanCapital (solar and clean-energy financing) both serve the broader sustainable-energy thesis. The topic also threads through the reading logs below — the June 29th, 2021 Quick Capture batch is dense with climate links (AI for energy efficiency, carbon-removal startups, green-finance critiques), and Kyle keeps adding to it (the June 2026 batch on climate-and-mortgages). Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letters references the topic from the capital-allocation/insurance angle.

Context: Climate change refers to long-term shifts in global temperatures and weather driven largely by greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity. In tech/VC circles it is treated both as a mitigation challenge (decarbonization, carbon accounting, clean energy) and as a large new market category (“climate tech”).

Quick Capture links — June 18, 2026

Links Kyle saved to this topic on June 18, 2026 (manual capture batch).

• https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/climate-change-could-end-mortgages-as-we-know-them/ — CBS News: climate change could end mortgages as we know them.

Where this appears

• It’s Time To Build — build zero-emission nuclear reactors as the climate answer
• How To Avoid a Climate Disaster — Bill Gates’s engineering-and-deployment path to net zero
• Decarbonization — the economy-wide mitigation lever; the problem climate change names
• Watershed Climate — carbon-accounting company serving the climate thesis
• CleanCapital — clean-energy financing platform; the sustainable-energy thesis
• Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letters — referenced from a capital-allocation/insurance frame
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Homo Deus, Utopia For Realists, Double Entry, The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts — books that touch the topic in passing

Quick Capture links — June 29th, 2021

Reading-list links from Kyle’s June 29th, 2021 Roam daily-note “Quick Capture” log.

• https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-can-help-fight-climate-change-by-optimizing-energy-efficiency
• https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-oil-execs-call-for-change-as-climate-technology-concerns-threaten-industry-11552315391
• https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18240346/nitrogen-dioxide-air-pollution-map-sentinel-satellite-descartes-labs
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/climate/fish-climate-change.html
• https://hbr.org/2019/02/what-would-the-green-new-deal-mean-for-businesses
• https://prospect.org/environment/blackrock-s-greenwashing-threatens-undermine-climate-action/
• https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/27/136958/one-mans-two-decade-quest-to-suck-greenhouse-gas-out-of-the-sky/
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525576703/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?tag=farnamstreet-20&ie=UTF8&linkId=3dd0abf89e9ed93efcfbd1760f4d741b
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics
• https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-artificial-intelligence-will-affect-the-future-of-energy-and-climate/
• https://www.exponentialview.co/apple-and-innovation-the-fractality/
• https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-generate-1ceedf1e-37d0-44a7-9c32-31e8f195f223.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosprorata&stream=top
• https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/04/jupiter-raises-23-million-to-tell-businesses-and-governments-how-climate-change-will-destroy-them/
• https://www.bostonmetal.com/
• https://carbonengineering.com/
• https://www.bluesource.com/
• https://twitter.com/jack_kelly/status/1082283333202128897?s=20

Mapping the changes — May 2020

From Kyle’s a May 2020 reading list (private note in the wiki) — a mapping exercise, written as two lists.

Changes already in motion

• Shrinking ice caps — and the under-discussed consequence: Russia gains a great deal of newly inhabitable land.
• Rising sea levels — beachfront property goes, and mountains become much more important.
• Water shortages; groundwater and drinking-water scarcity.
• Increased severity of natural disasters.

Deterrents — and why they’re already breaking down

• Agricultural change — already shifting under Alternative Meat.
• Reducing personal car use — gets worse with Remote Work, because if people can live anywhere they spread out, and suburban sprawl undoes the gain. The deterrent and the trend point opposite ways.

The climate refugee, treated as an “anthropology of an idea”: Ioane Teitiota; and closer to home, Californians leaving fire zones and driving crime spikes where they land.

Media Kyle wanted for a video essay on this — Toby in The Newsroom (show) arguing it’s already too late; “CliFi” and the line from The Water Knife about how we knew and did nothing.