subtitle: my toolkit of framing and filtering the never-ending climate information firehose
TLDR: There’s an abundance of climate content out there. Rather than trying to read faster or multitask, set up the right search criteria and filters. First, understand the foundations. Then dive into specific areas based on your specific beliefs and interests.
I started out this week thinking I would aggregate all the helpful resources I’ve consumed over the last ten months. Then I’d summarize my learnings on what I’ve found most helpful. I did a brainstorm session, wrote an outline, and even had my headings all laid out nicely. But then I kept procrastinating on the actual writing. Why?
After enough pacing around and distractions, I became self-aware of the strong resistance to put out another climate resource guide. The world doesn’t need another list of climate resources. There’s already some great resource guides (example A and example B).
Not long ago, the mere existence of climate change was heavily debated. Today, there’s an abundance of climate tech content. Whether it’s books, newsletters, podcasts, or social media, the sheer volume of climate content is staggering. We need to galvanize the masses to take action, but there’s also a separate issue of how to keep up with climate. It seems like every day there’s a new bill being passed, startup raising funding, or groundbreaking technological breakthrough. The pace at which climate tech moves combined with the breadth of information often feels overwhelming.
When it comes to drinking from the firehouse of climate tech content, I’ve found tightening the knob to be more helpful than trying to have a bigger mouth. That’s all to say: approach learning about climate with the proper search and filter rather than trying to consume everything.
In starting Build in Climate, I’ve consistently felt imposter syndrome because I’m writing about topics that I start out knowing very little about. Every two weeks, I research and share what I learned (and that’s also in addition to my personal blog and podcast). While I’m far from an expert on any topic in climate, I can confidently say that I’ve had to get good at learning. Every iteration of this newsletter reinforces the meta-skills of information consumption, synthesis, and compression. To combat the information overload in climate, I’m sharing the absolute must-have resources along with the frameworks on how I keep a pulse on what’s going on in climate. Thinking about thinking is a pretty nerdy topic if you ask me, but I think it’s worth the investment given human attention is the scarcest resource in the world.
Today, we’ll be covering the following sequence:
First things first. Before diving in (and before experiencing information overload), everyone should familiarize themselves with the foundations. It’s worth the upfront investment of ~5 hours to ramp up on climate-relevant science and historical data to understand how big the problem is and get an initial sense for what we can do about it. These are must-read for anyone getting into climate: