Climate Adaptation and Heart Disease

Climate Capital’s very own Jessica Alter, wrote the following piece on investing in Climate Adaptation. Read the full piece here.

In late 2020, I purchased a home in Sonoma County. Three weeks later the Glass Fire broke out — mandatory evacuation, Cal Fire staged at the top of my street (I was fortunate and my home was OK). I’m not alone, 1 in 6 Americans lives in an area with significant wildfire risk. This incident woke me up to the significant impact climate change is having on our lives and I made a promise to myself to find a way to contribute to solutions. About a year and a half later, I started to make good on this promise by investing and advising early stage climate tech companies. And I observed that many climate-focused VCs would not touch adaptation. That is, they would not invest in companies that help us live with the impacts of climate change. Why?

A Few Definitions

• Mitigation — Mitigation refers to solutions that slow down or reverse climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Solutions include everything from carbon capture and storage to renewable energy to circular economy and climate finance.

• Adaptation — If the aim of mitigation work is to prevent the environment from changing, then adaptation solutions strive to help people live in an altered environment. It covers everything from helping farmers grow crops with less rainfall to making sure buildings can withstand flooding events to creating new systems to predict asset risk.

The impacts of climate change have not just gotten dramatically worse, they’ve gotten very real. To learn more read the full piece here.