Description
While the debate about the appropriate policy response to human-induced climate change has become increasingly polarized, there is ample room for innovations that care for the earth God created, protect against environmental risk, and bet on the human capacity for ingenuity and risk to solve great problems. Anyone who visits a national or state park in the United States, for example, experiences the blessing of conservation, while those very visits, along with countless other beneficial aspects of human life, depend on effective and sustainable stewardship of energy sources and other natural resources.
We're interested in ventures thinking creatively and optimistically about large-scale ways to shape our use of natural resources—to find breakthroughs in land and water use as well as wind, solar, and nuclear power that can open up possibilities for our collective future. We see outsized value in high-risk exploratory endeavors at the scientific edge, as well as the important creative continuity of conservation.
In today’s commercially-driven world people are more likely to be seen and referred to as 'consumers' than anything else. Instead of being met with resistance, this shift has often meant that individuals have formed their identity through a composite of brands, and product purchasing can be guided more by the desire to make a statement about one’s identity and values than strict utility. As a result, the lines between social movement, capitalism, and community are increasingly blurry (see: Nike, Whole Foods, and Patagonia).
Given this reality (which is with us for both better and worse), we’d like to support entrepreneurs with a vision for building brands with a counter-culturally virtuous and optimistic view of the world, spreading hope and beauty, eliminating stigma, and most fundamentally, redirecting our identity away from materialistic consumption and toward lasting contentment.
