Speed & Scale: A Global Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now
by John Doerr
One pacesetter in this arena is Microsoft, which recently made an unprecedented commitment to become carbon negative by 2030.16 The tech giant pledged that its total operations—plus supply chain—will remove more carbon than they emit. By 2050, Microsoft aims to eliminate its entire history of emissions, dating back to 1975, when Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and cofounded the company with Paul Allen. The company’s pledge came attached to a $1 billion investment to accelerate and scale a growing portfolio of carbon removal projects already under way. As Microsoft’s team leaders wrote, “Those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so.” In the spirit of OKR tracking, they promised an annual sustainability report to “detail our carbon impact and reduction journey.” By the time Ethan shared his vision with us at Kleiner, he’d raised money from family and friends for an experimental kitchen in an old hospital building. As I came to know him, I found Ethan to be one of the most authentic people I’d ever met. He was committed to giving people what they love—the experience of grilling and tasting meat—but with peas and lentils and seed oils subbing for animals. He chose the most sustainable crops and pulled out their proteins to create the biochemical essence of beef—no cow required. While Ethan might have looked like a latter-day hippie, he had a sound business plan, backed by science and consumer taste testing. Plus we loved the name: Beyond Meat. Kleiner Perkins became the first big investor in Ethan’s fledgling company.
By 2020, 90 percent of the energy generated by Ørsted was renewable.30 After cutting its own CO2 emissions by 70 percent, it was named the world’s most sustainable company at the World Economic Forum.31 Today it’s the world’s largest offshore wind developer, with one third of a growing global market. For any fossil fuel company looking to escape its past, Ørsted is a role model par excellence.
“A wider movement of farmers wants to get on board with regenerative agriculture,” says Amol Deshpande of the Farmers Business Network. “It’s both more profitable and it helps preserve their land—and ninety percent of their wealth is in their land.” In shifting more land from pasturing to high-demand crops, he adds, farmers can further increase their farms’ value.
All told, more than 15 percent of the entire emissions emergency, around 9 gigatons a year, can be attributed directly to our food system—to industrial farming, livestock (especially beef cattle), rice production, and emissions from fertilizers and food waste.4 To reach net zero, we must change the way farming and our food system works, from the ground up.
All three realms of nature—lands, forests, and oceans—are essential to our net-zero mandate. Our carbon sinks lie at the fault line between climate stability and climate catastrophe, between biodiversity and mass extinctions. We are among the fragile species at risk. On the tree of evolution, humanity is now out on a limb, an imminent danger to itself. But
What would the climate-optimal diet look like? Botanist and author Michael Pollan has a simple prescription: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Research from Johns Hopkins University concluded that a “two-thirds vegan diet,” restricting meat and dairy to a maximum of one serving apiece per day, would cut livestock emissions by as much as 60 percent.
"One pacesetter in this arena is Microsoft, which recently made an unprecedented commitment to become carbon negative by 2030.16 The tech giant pledged that its total operations—plus supply chain—will remove more carbon than they emit. By 2050, Microsoft aims to eliminate its entire history of emissions, dating back to 1975, when Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and cofounded the company with Paul Allen. The company’s pledge came attached to a $1 billion investment to accelerate and scale a growing portfolio of carbon removal projects already under way. As Microsoft’s team leaders wrote, “Those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so.” In the spirit of OKR tracking, they promised an annual sustainability report to “detail our carbon impact and reduction journey.”"
"By the time Ethan shared his vision with us at Kleiner, he’d raised money from family and friends for an experimental kitchen in an old hospital building. As I came to know him, I found Ethan to be one of the most authentic people I’d ever met. He was committed to giving people what they love—the experience of grilling and tasting meat—but with peas and lentils and seed oils subbing for animals. He chose the most sustainable crops and pulled out their proteins to create the biochemical essence of beef—no cow required. While Ethan might have looked like a latter-day hippie, he had a sound business plan, backed by science and consumer taste testing. Plus we loved the name: Beyond Meat. Kleiner Perkins became the first big investor in Ethan’s fledgling company."
"It’s very hard to create new markets. I like going after established markets. People already had thermostats; we didn’t invent them. But when you invade an established market, you have to watch how the incumbents respond to change. Sometimes they will buy companies, either to squash change or incorporate change and grow their business. Sometimes they will sue to scare folks, just because they have market power. And sometimes they will ignore you. In the case of Nest, the incumbent in the room sued us. Honeywell said we were infringing on patents—for having a circular knob, for example. Four years later, the suit got tossed. New entrants have something the incumbents don’t: agility."
"In 2005, when early EV startups were first putting rubber on the road, a battery cost at least sixty thousand dollars. The only electric vehicles that could turn a profit were luxury or sports cars priced over one hundred thousand dollars, like the early models from Tesla and Fisker. In accordance with Wright’s Law, each doubling of production lowered the battery packs’ cost by 35 percent.34 By 2021, a similar-size battery pack cost only eight thousand dollars.35 All of a sudden, EVs were within reach of cost competitiveness with internal combustion vehicles."
"Amazon makes an ideal role model for climate action because people know how difficult the challenge is for us. We don’t just move bits and bytes around. While data centers are heavy users of electricity, it’s relatively easy to take what’s already electrical and switch it over to sustainable energy. In 2019, we said we’d power our operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. Now we are going to do it by 2025. We’re five years ahead of schedule, so that is going really well."
"By the year 2050, humankind will have some large bills coming due. As we’ve noted, our growing population will require more than 50 percent more calories.59 Meeting people’s needs while cutting emissions and protecting vital ecosystems will be a tall task. But by embracing more productive and regenerative agriculture, shifting to precision fertilization, encouraging lower-emission diets, and reducing waste, we can both help out the climate and enjoy our food, as we should."
"By 2020, 90 percent of the energy generated by Ørsted was renewable.30 After cutting its own CO2 emissions by 70 percent, it was named the world’s most sustainable company at the World Economic Forum.31 Today it’s the world’s largest offshore wind developer, with one third of a growing global market. For any fossil fuel company looking to escape its past, Ørsted is a role model par excellence."
- →As U.S. climate envoy John Kerry noted, “If you did everything that we laid out that we needed to do in Paris, we would still be rising 3.7 degrees centigrade.8 That’s catastrophic. But we’re not doing everything we laid out in Paris, so we’re … heading to 4.1 or 4.5 degrees—a formula for environmental Armageddon.”
- →The more we understand both the risks and opportunities, the faster we can get to that tectonic shift across all industries. Johnson & Johnson has a higher price-to-earnings ratio today than most of its peers in part because CEO Alex Gorsky focuses on lowering J&J’s carbon footprint.
- →Any serious discussion of the climate crisis must focus on atmospheric methane, much of it from livestock and food waste. Together they generate 12 percent of all greenhouse gases, or 7 gigatons of CO2e per year.24 As you might have guessed, cattle is king, at 4.6 gigatons.25
- →In 2019, Denmark became the first country to propose “environmental price tags” in food stores.33 “Food is the strongest lever we have as individuals for fighting climate change,” says Sandra Noonan, chief sustainability officer at Just Salad,
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