Matt Rogers Contributor Share on Twitter Matt Rogers built the first machine-learning thermostat as the co-founder of Nest. He was previously an engineer at Apple, where he helped build ten generations of the iPhone and the first iPad. He currently splits his time between Incite.org and a new company that he is developing. The best […]
ESG and shareholder activism: A tsunami is coming to Silicon Valley
With the increase in attention on ESG issues over the past few years, it’s easy for companies to assume that we’ve reached the crest of the ESG wave. However, we are only at the early stages.
Enpal closes out Series C with $174M from SoftBank for tech to make it easier for homeowners to make the switch to solar energy
One of the gating factors for getting more homeowners to make the switch to solar energy has been that solar, as a business, is hard one to get right, with many a company failing when they’ve been unable to strike the right balance between the technology working as it should, provisioning services in a cost-effective […]
A road map for climate investors
Climate in the last decade has been unprecedented in many ways, none of them good. Wildfires in California have consumed entire towns; thousands of miles away, New Yorkers inhale the ashes.
It’s a big moment for climate change. Here are 4 books for autumn to understand what’s changing
We’re just weeks away from COP26, the big environmental policy confab where scores of world leaders will descend on Scotland and determine the future of the planet, answering the question, “Should we all die or live?” That’s meant a whole truckload of new books on the subject, as well as renewed attention to older works […]
Everything is accelerating in the exponential age
Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride. The pace of change over the last few decades is only set to accelerate in the coming years, as improvements in biology, medicine, spacecraft, manufacturing, software and more continue to transform the very foundations of society, economics and politics. We cover these innovations pretty much daily […]
The dark side of environmentalism
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson isn’t a book that lauds ecoterrorists. In fact, it mostly manages to avoid the subject across its many pages. Yet, at the center of its speculative account about the eponymous ministry and its leadership over the next few decades, the dark side is the linchpin for […]
On ten years of ‘The Vertical Farm’
Roughly two hours pass between my initial email and our first Zoom chat — on a Sunday, no less. I skip the post-gym shower and pop on a baseball cap, because I’m not sure when the opportunity will present itself again. After more than two decades of espousing the benefits of vertical farming around the […]
How culturally deranged is our climate today?
Climate change has been the deepest, most challenging cognitive puzzle for humans to untangle these past years. It’s systems on top of systems, with emergent properties that can easily turn intuitive notions into catastrophic dead ends. Every action has a reaction or ten, and improving one part of the system almost invariably leads to weaknesses […]
Made of Air, a maker of ‘carbon negative’ thermoplastics, locks in $5.8M
Berlin-based climate tech startup Made of Air has closed a €5 million (~$5.8 million) seed funding round, led by Norwegian sustainability-focused family fund, TD Veen. Also participating are Patrick Pichette (former CFO of Google and chairman of the board of Twitter), EQT Group, Thomas Von Koch (CEO & co-founder of EQT Group), Tuesday Capital, the […]