Thread by @leashless

So I want to talk a bit about being a climate-aware CEO.

I don't mean the daffy greenwashing version, "we're switching to recycled packaging to do our part."

No, I mean a hardcore "we've broken the world and now we pay" type of climate aware CEO. It's a different kind of mind.

https://twitter.com/leashless/status/1461156309055807500

I'm running a company to save lives. Not directly, I'm not making HIV vaccines. I'm running a company to make money, and then I'm going to spend that money saving lives.

Maybe some of our technology will help but that's very much a bonus: goal is vast world-transforming wealth.

We're talking "man who fell to earth" levels of wealth. I figure there are going to be hundreds of millions of climate refugees, and the UN etc. will be totally disorganised and shambolic, as they are now.

Enter philanthropy. $1bn saves 1m families, say. lateralaction.com/articles/the-m…

This is no joke. I have literally no other option left on the table to help these people survive: UN, Red Cross, DoD, Ikea etc. all dead-ended in their own systemic incompetence. They're fucking the refugees who exist today and it will be no better tomorrow. Worked with 'em all.

So now I run a company. Aware that it's a phase, not a route to a private island, but a route to commissioning prototypes, testing and experiments for a few years, then getting hands-on involved in the deep dark details. I'm raising money to go to work on the Big Old Problem.

I got driven to this: Elon Musk tooled up to use capitalism to hit his goals, and it worked. I'd tried Free Hardware, open source/ip, government, civil society, IGOs.

Nothing worked: nothing could make plans for 20 years in the future, although OBVIOUSLY any human alive must eat

So when I ask "if ten or twenty million people a year walk out of flooded or parched areas, what will they eat?" and the people who need to be planning NOW for those people to survive THEN say "we don't really think that far ahead" they're planning to let those people just die.

And that was my universal experience right across the humanitarian world

The idea that we needed to develop *technology* to answer the impossible challenge of keeping hundreds of millions of climate refugees alive after climate change drives them from their homes? Alien language

I'm just trying to drill deep enough into The Future that I hit a gusher of liquid money, doing something which is climate-neutral at worst, radically good for the planet at best. Then then that's going to be used to seed new cities to rehouse the people who will otherwise die.

I would consider this position to be, based on available data, climate realist.

Not a doomer, not even a prepper, really.

I'm just a rational actor looking at the future, saying "this is going to take 30 years to figure out" in 2002, and here I am in 2022 still working on it.

The very kind @DevinBalkind is organising my work here: leashless.softr.app

It's a ton of material. Gets into all the details. Over the next few years we're going to push this through AI-based clustering to make it easier to navigate, put things on timelines and so on.

But I've gotta tell you. Every fucking day "Was this enough? Am I done?" Energy management over 20 years of nobody giving a shit about the work, or people I am trying to reach.

You *know* flood and famine are coming. They're already here. You know people will migrate. They are.

It's only going to get worse. The governments are already sending gun boats rather than rescue helicopters. Can you imagine with another 10 years of warming and breakdown how bad this gets, then another 10 years after that?

I saw it 20 years ago. I've got a little time to work.