{"id":217149,"date":"2026-01-05T02:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T02:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/217149\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T02:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T02:05:14","slug":"we-cant-innovate-our-way-out-of-the-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/217149\/","title":{"rendered":"We can\u2019t innovate our way out of the climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

OPTIMISM, especially about our ability to solve big problems, is in brutally short supply these days. <\/p>\n

The gloom might be at its worst in the climate change arena, where the Trump administration is in the middle of an all-out assault on green energy and the world is poised to miss the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n

Given that backdrop, I was struck by Bill Gates\u2019\u00a0recent announcement of a major \u2013 and decidedly optimistic \u2013 shift in his thinking about climate change. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made great progress\u201d on addressing global warming, he wrote, and he\u2019s confident that the changing climate \u201cwill not lead to humanity\u2019s demise\u201d. But it\u2019s time to shift our attention from cutting near-term emissions to investing in ways to \u201cimprove life in a warming world\u201d. <\/p>\n

Doing so, according to Gates, will require us to \u201cfocus on innovation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ensuring that global warming doesn\u2019t exterminate humanity strikes me as a terribly low bar. I\u2019d like our children to say that our generation left them a world better than the one we inherited, not just \u201cI\u2019m glad we\u2019re not all dead\u201d. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that goal is becoming harder and harder to reach, and technological innovation alone won\u2019t be enough to get us there.<\/p>\n

Innovation is an enormously powerful tool \u2013 often the best one we have. But it works best on problems where a single breakthrough can have a massive impact.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example, how effective it\u2019s been in areas such as public health, where one new drug or vaccine has sometimes been enough to eliminate a disease. These solutions\u00a0are developed and even manufactured by relatively small numbers of highly skilled people. Technology handles that kind of problem superbly.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO<\/p>\n

\"Susan<\/a>\"Projected<\/a><\/p>\n

Climate change, with its multiple causes, diverse impacts and global reach, is very different. Handling its effects can\u2019t be outsourced to a small group of experts.<\/p>\n

To better understand what innovation can and can\u2019t do to help us through the climate crisis, I reached out to\u00a0Spencer Glendon. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known Glendon for more than a decade, since he gave a talk about his research at Harvard Business School while I was a professor there. He\u2019s the former director of investment research at Wellington Management and is now the founder of Probable Futures, a non-profit that strives to make climate science accessible and understandable to everyone.<\/p>\n

Our central task in dealing with climate change, Glendon says, is \u201cto manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable\u201d. What makes that so hard is that climate change isn\u2019t just one issue, he explains; it has worked\u00a0its way into every facet of our world.<\/p>\n

So while an innovative technology might help, say, farmers struggling with a climate that no longer supports the types of crops they\u2019ve been growing for decades, that\u00a0same breakthrough is unlikely to do anything for the school superintendent down the road who\u2019s wondering what to do about the way heat hurts kids\u2019 health and cognition, or the homeowner who can\u2019t sell her\u00a0property because\u00a0no bank will issue a 30-year mortgage in an area newly prone to\u00a0flooding.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean innovation has no role in responding to climate change. But the way we need to innovate isn\u2019t just technological, but in how we think. <\/p>\n

\u201cVirtually every decision we make depends on assumptions about the climate, even if we don\u2019t realise it,\u201d says Glendon.<\/p>\n

When you build a house or buy a municipal bond or plan a ski holiday, you are building on those assumptions. And \u201cthe climate has been so stable for so long we mostly assume nothing will change\u201d, he says. So, what happens when it does?<\/p>\n

We need to shift from implicit beliefs about the climate to explicit models built on the best science. And we need to\u00a0feed those models into decisions that we would normally think to have nothing to\u00a0do with the weather \u2013 everything from mortgage underwriting to the grade of asphalt used to pave roads.<\/p>\n

How can leaders succeed in this new reality? <\/p>\n

\u201cGood leaders will ask \u2018What climate conditions are we assuming now and in the future?\u2019 whenever they make a decision,\u201d says Glendon. \u201cThe good news is that we have a good forecast of how local climate conditions will change. Decision-makers of all kinds don\u2019t need to be climate experts, but they need basic climate literacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That mindset shift is among the most difficult \u2013 and surely the most important \u2013 leadership challenges of our time. As we think about our New Year\u2019s resolutions, my suggestion for leaders and for everyone who wants to be one is just that: Make 2026 the year you get climate literate. BLOOMBERG<\/p>\n

The writer writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management and is the author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter<\/p>\n

Decoding Asia newsletter: your guide to navigating Asia in a new global order. Sign up here to get Decoding Asia newsletter. Delivered to your inbox. Free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OPTIMISM, especially about our ability to solve big problems, is in brutally short supply these days. The gloom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-217149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}