The messaging around a proper response to climate change often, and necessarily, focuses on high level measures. Slogans promoting the conversion of power generation to low carbon sources, transitioning over to electric vehicles, and increasing coastal resilience are needed to draw attention to the issue. That said, they miss the underlying complexity associated with making the transition happen.
This issue was driven home this weekend in a conversation with a visiting 20-something-year-old who works in a tech start-up focused on shipping port logistics. The conversation revolved on technology choices for loading and unloading freight with low emission equipment in response to ports becoming targeted centers for emissions reductions. The conversation was enlightening and optimistic in that it conveyed how some smart and entrepreneurial people see opportunity imbedded in the energy transition.
Despite some high level complaining about how the economic transition required by the energy transition will raise costs, our conversation had a very different perspective. Spurred by clear regulatory standards serving as an economic signal, this next generation of business leaders sees profit for the first businesses that can crack the code of adapting the business practices of today to what we need to meet necessary climate change goals. The options on the table not only lower the climate impact of port management, they also offer health benefits to the neighbors by eliminating diesel exhaust, and lower the costs of shipping in a counter to inflationary pressures. The benefits to society are hard to ignore.
Like a lot of things in America, it is revealing to follow the money. While the legacy carbon intense fuel suppliers want to keep us looking back, these new business people see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for those looking forward on energy. It is up to us to keep the pressure on for clear and enforceable climate goals, so that investors and entrepreneurs will become our ally in developing the new economy that will help make climate response both an ecological and economic success.
