10 Facts About Plastic Pollution You Need to Know

The Investment Gap that Threatens the Planet

The growing threat of climate change is no longer a matter of contentious scientific debate. Climate scientists now agree that humanity’s “carbon budget”—the cumulative sum of greenhouse gases that humanity can emit while avoiding the worst effects of climate change—will be exhausted by roughly 2040 at current emission rates. While all levels of warming carry consequences, exceeding this budget will likely cause more than 2 degrees Celsius of warming, triggering irreversible, dangerous, and costly climatic change. For decades, investors, policy makers, academics, and entrepreneurs have been debating the best path forward. In recent years, the costs of clean and efficient technologies such as solar photovoltaics (PV), LEDs, and electric vehicles have plummeted, and deployment of these technologies has skyrocketed. While we all applaud these achievements, they have also led high-profile investment professionals such as Jigar Shah, academics such as Marc Jacobson, and other vocal figures to proclaim that the world already has the portfolio of solutions necessary to solve the climate crisis, and that investors and governments should focus their efforts on supporting the deployment of these later-stage solutions. This assertion calls into question the value of funding early-stage solutions and places the funding of early-stage and later-stage solutions in competition with one another.