All Past Seminars

Everywhere, newsletters and podcasts are discussing the "pivot" climate tech is facing — a pivot to national security/defense, reliability/resilience, AI/grid infrastructure, to later stage companies with revenue, etc. — as if it is just a practicality of the times. Kara Rodby discusses why these reframings are not inherently climate tech and, in fact, are quite dangerous to the climate movement.

Degrowth is an intentional downscaling of the global economy, meant to support both ecological sustainability and social justice goals. In previous reports by the Degrowth Institute (DGI) we have detailed why and how the economy has outgrown the planet. It is not just carbon emissions, or wasteful consumption, or some specific sector of the economy that threatens planetary health, it's the pursuit of endless economic growth writ large. This presentation will introduce the work of DGI and present key insights from our work promoting economic downscaling as a path toward true sustainability.

Paradoxically, as the planet heats up at an accelerating pace, attention and effort toward climate mitigation are fading. Against that backdrop, this talk offers an unconventional but pragmatic perspective from a chemist applying systems thinking to expose the real challenges, show how comforting narratives fail just as acceleration begins, and reveal the risks of pursuing solutions built on the wrong plot.

The talk that inspired this series. Kara Rodby examines how the role of venture capital and startups drive the central thrust of today's Clean Tech 2.0 movement, and how this model is doomed to fail investors and the climate.