Let's Climate Chat + (Nordic) Chill đ The TILT #17
Getting uncomfortable about the climate crisis with Hampus Jakobsson
In Episode 21 of the podcast SUPERTILT whirls around the climate galaxy talking to Hampus Jakobsson: a climate tech investor and general partner of Pale Blue Dot VC. Hampus is based in MalmĂś, Sweden and after 100+ angel investments and working at a deep tech fund, he started Pale Blue Dot: a seed-stage ClimateTech fund investing in startups that reduce and reverse the effects of climate change and prepare for a new world.
We love radical candor at team SUPERTILT and we love Hampusâ stoic, frank attitude towards the climate conundrums the world is faced with. His tales of some of the uncomfortable conversations heâs personally had may make you cringe in discomfort, or LOL hard. Either way, we think his bullish way of approaching uncomfortable subject matters is super inspiring, and absolutely essential.
Hampus has a wealth of knowledge across the whole climate space spectrum and we're thrilled to speak to him about a range of topics:
the 3 core components of the climate crisis
the power of being uncomfortable and asking stupid questions
helping early stage tech founders
what is most impactful to reduce our personal carbon footprint
the role of shame in the climate crisis
Tune in to Episode 21 and #tiltwithusâŚ
Explain it like I'm five (ELI5), what is one area of climate tech in general that you feel like you're constantly doing an ELI5?
Yeah, I think there are plenty. And actually one thing I try to tell a lot of people is they should pretend they're a five-year-old and they're asking, because it's like, you're just gonna ask âwhy, why, whyâ until you get to the crazy fundamentals of how the world works.
But the thing I tell a lot of founders is that you should not talk to five-year-olds. You should talk to a retirement home. Because like, when you talk to these people, you should realize these are smart people. Right. And they're mature. They've learned stuff about life, but they don't know anything about what you're doing.
Hampus on being Vegetarian:
I don't think anybody should eat and kill animals. I think it's ridiculous. I think it's absurd. It's crazy to say that you want to have a world where you do something less bad.
Why not just wake up to 2050 and say you want to do something the right way. And I think when you take on that lens, so many things become different. Like you just ask yourself, is this (eating animals) something we want around in 50 years? Or is this just something that kind of, you know, cushions this a bit.
What is the best thing the average person can do to make a positive impact on the world in terms of climate, or to minimize our carbon footprint? What is your perspective on this?
I think that there are two categories of things. I think one thing is that it's very tricky to shout at others when you are kind of behaving badly yourself.
So I would recommend all people to think : can you switch out fossil fuels? Anything from having other car, using connective transport, switching to an EV. All of the obvious things that you just start looking at animals and fossil fuel as blood from other people.
Then it's like, okay, you want to have minimal amounts of other people's blood. You don't want to do unnecessary harm. So move away from those things. But the sad part is a lot of people do that and now their conscious is clean. They're done. But this is not the biggest thing we're doing all the time.
The biggest thing we're doing on the planet is that corporates are being paid to destroy the planet and your money is in on it. So the company you're working for is probably doing horrible practices. Your pension money is probably put into fossil fuel and meat companies and other things like heavy industry.
Like a lot of these things are just âbeingâ. Your money, your love, your time, your votes⌠they are put into places that destroy the planet every single day. And if you go totally clean, conscious on your personal actions during the day, that is 10%. Most of your footprint, that 90%, is what happens at your watch that you're not bothering about.
You should ask yourself, who are we electing to government? How much pressure are they putting on the people that they might not make money on the destruction, but they definitely keep money due to destruction. So vote with your feet, protest. Vote with your votes fairly like in a vote for a party you believe will drive change.
And we need to build more trust. We need to work together. We need to pay for the things we destroy. We need to build this trust together because otherwise this is never going to be solved.
And I think that gets you to voting with your money. You should call your bank, your pension fund and say, âI want full transparency. I don't want to put in fossil fuels at all. And then I don't want any kind of meat production or kind of animals in my moneyâ.
And when the bank tells you, âYour money is going to be at much higher financial risk when you do thisâ, you're like, âNo, no, no, you don't understand. My money out is a greater risk if I put it in shit stuff. I want to move my money into where it's safest, which is the future I think we should live in.â
And I think that when we all do these things⌠then I think we can move to a better place.
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