Giving Compass' Take:

• Cities and local governments are in a key position: they can help foster a wave of profitable development that slows the progress of climate change. 

• How can your area create jobs in clean energy and other climate-friendly industries? How can the local action model be spread from place to place? 

• Find out how clean energy technology is bringing middle-class jobs to poor, rural communities. 

Climate change is upon us. I use the term “global weirding.” The weather is weird everywhere. We never before had three category five hurricanes on the satellite screen at the same time in the Caribbean. And of course the people in Puerto Rico continue to struggle—thousands of them without power six months later. Before the winds stopped blowing, Elon Musk was shipping solar panels and Tesla walls to Puerto Rico. There are a number of other companies that are working in PR to build microgrids. Microgrids always should have been the answer. Puerto Rico’s bankrupt utility insisted on sticking with fossils.

There is also a stupid FEMA rule that says that when you are doing restoration after a disaster, you can only build it back to the level it was at before. So FEMA is not helping. But there are a lot of microgrids going in in Puerto Rico. There are microgrids going in in Northern California after the big fires. We are starting to see people suddenly decide to get smart after these climate disasters. Will it be enough? I don’t know.

We know how to stop climate change and do so profitably. We ought to get about it with alacrity.

I’m working now with the city of Fort Collins, which has initiated a climate economy. They are asking, how do we drive our prosperity by solving the climate crisis? How do we create jobs? Enhance livelihoods? How do we bring in entrepreneurs and companies that are solving climate change by implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy, as an economic development strategy?

Read the full interview about profitable climate solutions with Hunter Lovins at Social Capital Markets.