YC: Requests for Startups

> We have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change if startups offer commercial solutions to decarbonize society or remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Either this is sloppily phrased, or the SV techno-optimist kool-aid is way stronger than I would have thought plausible. Does anyone seriously believe that a reasonable solution to climate change has exactly one thing on the list and it's "more climate tech start-ups"? Of course climate tech has to play a role (we need everything we can throw at the problem), and start-ups will certainly provide a subset of that tech, but claiming that this alone provides "a fair chance" is extremely revealing of certain bias (and ignorance)

What point are you trying to make exactly?

I believe startups can still make it if they can crack making solar + battery cheaper than $0.15/kwh, or bio fuels cheaper than gasoline.

The sun is free 1.3kw / meter energy for ~5 hours in the sun belt states.

While I agree the phrasing could be better from YC, there is also truth to that statement. A lot of solutions to decarbonize have fallen flat on their faces to become a commercially viable solution. Ideas and new technology are needed as companies everywhere have shown they will not take the necessary action if it impacts the bottom line.

Doesn’t that just mean that maybe we should drop the requirement for commercial viability? Everything looks like a nail and all that.

Indeed. On the other hand there is absolute certainty that very, very large sums of money will be made mitigating the current and future impact of change. Maybe decarbonization matters and a maybe not, but rising seas and changing weather aren’t getting better anytime soon and there are real, human centric problems to be solved now and for the foreseeable future.

YC is simply missing the boat here. Pun intended.

Oh it is already happening. There is an enormous amount of innovation, and "clean tech" is getting more efficient and less expensive by the day. You just barely hear about it because it gets muffled by all the screaming of a handful of activists who'd rather see us living in caves again.

There is a pretty big middle ground between “tech will solve every climate related problem on every axis” and “wanting to see us living in caves again”. Polar extremes are just childish.