Originally published on Radical on 2024-07-18.
A growing sector of climate tech and green investments is concerned with what can best be described as “upgrading nature”. Things like ‘better’ insects, ‘improved’ trees, ‘enhanced’ wood, ‘supercharged’ vegetables, ‘superior’ algae, ‘more efficient’ cows.
The separation of humans and nature, known as dualism, which is a key enabler of capitalism’s exploitative relationship with the world, reaches its peak in the idea of patenting a life-form and owning, legally, its very existence on an evolutionary level. For the purpose, of course, of making an outsized profit.
It may sound preposterous but its run-of-the-mill in climate tech circles. Despite all the positioning about the importance of nature-based solutions, regeneration, and healing almost 12% of the 300+ climate tech investments I am investigating are busy upgrading nature.
I am not talking here about approaches like rice intensification, precision fermentation, selective breeding, or enhanced weathering which are focused on scaling or speeding up a natural process through human intervention.
I am referring to the companies looking at nature and coming to the conclusion that it is just not good enough.
So what’s the problem here?