We're in a critical moment for the climate. 2024 was the warmest year on record, and we're continuing to hit devastating climate disasters. Meanwhile, we are facing the most climate-hostile administration, even while international corporations retreat from their climate pledges.

What's a climate-concerned citizen to do in this time? To find out, I went to two events at SF Climate week this year, both hosted by Giving Green. The first was a private panel specifically focused on philanthropy in the age of Trump. The panelists included representatives from outlier projects, 1.5Climate, and Skyline Foundation. Though the event was ostensibly a panel, it really took the form more of a general conversation, with folks throwing ideas back and forth around the room.

The second was a public event more general focused on "how to do climate philanthropy". This was more of a panel and a Q&A format, with two parts. The first, hosted by Giving Green, featured Steve Newman, and Younger Family Fund advisor, Nathan Aleman discussing their journey in climate philanthropy. The second part was hosted by Breene Murphy of the Carbon Collective and focused on a discussion with green impact investing with Dan Chu, Executive Director of the Sierra Club Foundation.

I learned a lot, and I wanted to synthesize some learnings while they're still fresh in my mind.

What to do About Trump

Giving Green's 2024 priorities included 8 areas where their research converges on high scale, reasonable feasibility of making a difference, and high need for additional financial contributions:

Their response to Trump was to take a basically defensive posture focused on advancing next-gen nuclear and advanced geothermal, which both have strong bi-partisan support. The response in the room, and on the panel, was more varied. Some ideas I heard:

• There is a lot of opportunity for what my colleague Aimee calls "revenge policymaking" in the states. California recently became the 4th largest economy in the world, eclipsing Japan, and there's certainly a lot of appetite here and in other blue states (NY, Washington) to continue making climate progress. This thread aligns well with movements like Abundance (substack, book), which are also oriented around building effective governance. I broadly agree that Dems have a brand problem in state and local governments, a (not-unwarranted) perception of dysfunction that doesn't do us any favors when running for national office. It seems like a good idea, in a moment when we're so disempowered nationally, to clean house locally.

• At the same time, it took a lot of effort to get the IRA and IIJA passed federally, and it was not possible without a lot of infrastructure in DC. To retreat from federal policy would cause that infrastructure to wither -- that is, to wither more given the attrition that's already happening in DC as a result of DOGE and other efforts. People were particularly concerned about NOAA and the Loan Programs Office at the DoE. Nobody thinks philanthropy can fully back-stop the massive federal spending cuts, but we can at least reduce the damage.

• There is clear and growing need for adaptation on top of mitigation. Outlier Projects in particular is focused on getting past the "moral hazard"/"you're giving in" reactions to approaches like SRM. This is also a place where climate tech and philanthropy approaches more traditional community building. In a time of overshoot and climate disruption, community resilience might be more important than CDR. My experience at Recoolit has me feeling skeptical that there's anyone out there willing to pay for the latter.

• The US is just one emitter, and there's a whole world out there. Another group I'm involved with, the Founders Pledge Climate Fund, has also been very focused on growing emissions in the developing world. Opinions in the room mostly leaned towards "We are American philanthropists, familiar with the US space and most interested in making a difference in the US". One bogeyman was a rumored upcoming executive order that would prohibit 501(c)(3) investments outside the US, though folks were both prepared for legal action in response, and convinced that there would continue to be some way to fund work outside the country. Another concern was something along the lines of "should we be telling people in other countries what to do". I strongly disagree with this objection, and strongly feel that we on the left should have a much stronger focus on building and wielding political power. There's a large space between wielding power coercively and being a strong advocate for things we believe in. Our aversion to power has ceded the field to folks who are much less scrupulous about things.

• Besides being defensive/reactive, a lot of folks in the room discussed going on the offense. For instance, folks brought up coming up with our own version of Project 2025, so that we're ready with a comprehensive agenda when the moment times. Besides promoting green policies in more local governments, we can also work on blocking anti-green policies ("owning the cons"?) One person in the room proposed going after cryptocurrencies and AI companies, both bases of power for our political opponents.

There were several additional threads in the room that I was unable to follow, given my position as an interested outsider in the space. For instance, I was not aware of the retreat of Breakthrough Energy Ventures from the climate space, a development which seems to have left a large funding gap in the space.

Overall, this event was both informative and inspiring. It helped me feel less alone in a turbulent and scary time. It's good to look into the faces of dedicated, talented people who share my concerns, are thinking through solutions from so many angles, and who are both generous with their own ideas and so open-minded and receptive to others'. It definitely felt like a community-building event -- I would love to remain connected with many of the folks I met!

Climate Philanthropy

My second SF Climate Week event began with Dan Stein hosting Steve Newman and Nathan Aleman. Both are experienced climate philanthropists, and it was interesting to hear how they approach the problem space. To some extent, there's a bit of confirmation bias here. I already generally agree with Giving Green's thesis about the importance of climate policy advocacy, and the speakers they brought in are preaching to the choir. Newman in particular mentioned several times that, had Giving Green existed at the start of his journey, he would have done much less research and much more of just letting Giving Green manage this climate philanthropy dollars.

It was interesting to hear Nathan Aleman discussing his climate philanthropy given the diverse political viewpoints in his family. I'm very worried about the continuing polarization/politicization of climate, and always looking for non-partisan climate opportunities. Aleman mentioned Deploy/US as the organization they fund, though he did mention that the impact is not yet clear. ClearPath is another organization that seems both right-leaning and climate-focused.

I was curious to hear how both panelists thought about the effectiveness of their philanthropy. For metrics and data oriented people, it can be difficult to think through contributions whose effects might not be evident for decades. Newman mentioned that he generally attempts to establish his grantees are experts, and then defers to their expertise. He mentioned a useful heuristic of "do they want to get off the phone with me to get back to work", vs "are they more focused on developing relationships with donors like me".

Impact Investing

The final event of the day was a discussion between Breene Murphy and Dan Chu. This was probably the most informative and action-oriented event of the day.

For most of us, our savings and assets are invested for the purposes of maximizing financial return, agnostic of how that's accomplished. Folks are broadly aware that some of the organizations in our portfolios might not be, like, super cool or whatever. But investing is simultaneously very complicated and connected with deep-seated feeling of security. Leave it up to the experts? At best, we might shift assets into ESG funds. Those have become a subject of controversy in the past few years, while simultaneously having dubious real-world impact or perhaps outright greenwashing.

Is there a better way to leverage the power latent in the combined assets of climate-concious investors? This is the broad space of impact investing. The Sierra Club's Shifting Trillions initiative is aimed at building a movement around this project. The talk was both a primer in the space, and a set of real-world examples of Sierra Club's impact investing fund from Dan Chu.

There are a couple of approaches to the space:

• Divestment, which aims to move money out of polluting companies. There are a few organizations primarily focused on this approach. For example, Fossil Free California aims to divest California's pension funds from fossil fuel companies. Both Breene Murphy and Dan Stein discussed divestment as "the least effective" option in the toolkit, and other sources agree

• Shareholder Activism, where investors in polluting companies vote their shares for better outcomes. A poster-child in this fight is the Engine1 ETF, which famously installed climate-aligned members on the board of ExxonMobil (here, again, Dan Chu alluded to the relative ineffectiveness of such an approach; what's the purpose of installing climate activists on the board of an oil company?) Arguably, as an individual investor, devoting any attention to your shareholder votes is a huge waste of time. However, by aggregating the votes of many smaller investors, it might be possible to force companies to take bigger action. The panelists mentioned iconik as a tool to help do this. Apparently, opportunities for impact via shareholder activism do exist.

• Reinvesting into climate solutions, where instead of just dumping specific "bad" companies, you focus on investing in "good" ones. Especially early-stage investments can be a huge help here, but the deal flow for early-stage companies is a limiting factor. With respect to shifting trillions, there must be a market for these large flows of money to go. Breene Murphy's Carbon Collective's CCSO ETF is one great example of this approach. Another organization mentioned by several folks was Prime Coalition. Carbon Collective also has a green bonds fund, theoretically enabling an entirely green balanced portfolio.

• Storytelling as an action which enables all the others. For instance, fossil fuels have underperformed the market recently, making them a comparatively bad investment. Renewable energy, meanwhile, has outperformed. Making this story more salient in the minds of investors might help accelerate the shift.

Dan Chu highlighted a few examples of the dramatic impact that the Sierra Club's impact portfolio was able to have on the world. For instance, they funded Solar Holler, which helps decarbonization while building critical allies in red states. Another powerful example was a non-recoverable grant they made to Standing Rock, enabling

Dan had what I perceived as an interesting take on "impact investing". In his (approximate) words:

If you're doing market rate of return, you're participating in the existing extractive economy

This is somewhat of a hard sell. I think the folks at Carbon Collective would like to argue that you can have your cake and eat it, too -- investing in values-aligned organizations while preserving your portfolio for continued activism, or maybe even building wealth. Other sources agree:

Our investment conviction is that sustainability-integrated portfolios can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors.

I lean more on Larry Fink than Dan Chus side here. I think climate investing has the potential to both make a difference, while providing better returns. I'm down to put some money behind this conviction, and would like to encourage my friends and family to do the same.

Summing Up

In an unprecedented dark moment for climate change, I found my day at SF Climate week inspiring and full of actionable insights. An important next step for me is to continue to participate in this community. This also feels like a good moment to step up my climate philanthropy, and encourage my fellow philanthropists to do the same. We can't close the gaps left by the retreat of federal funding, but we should strive to preserve what we can.

Additionally, I have a ton of next steps on the impact investing front:

• Look into shareholder activism using iconik
• Look into shifting my assets, perhaps using something like Values Advisor
• Continue doing more early-stage climate investing

If you're looking for angel investors in your climate tech company -- get in touch!