Originally published on Radical on 2024-06-21.
We need to invest less and compost more to start harvesting meaningful climate outcomes.
Financial investments into startups, including climate tech startups, expect a one-to-one return. Of course in terms of quantity they expect a one-to-many return but I’m referring to the kind of return: investing Euros should return Euros. Investors put money into a venture and expect to get money back, that money having ideally multiplied in the process. No VC firm invests money expecting to get back something else, such as goodwill, improved health, knowledge, or planetary regeneration. These are of course useful by-products that some investors prioritise but ultimately, if the money doesn’t come back, the exercise is considered a failure.
For many this is just a truism. Duh.
Yet this is the only system that works like this.
No other ecological or social system expects to put in one unit of something and get two (or more) identical units of that same something back¹. There is always a process of transformation. In many cases a very long process of several transformations which are hard to predict.
When you put banana peels into your compost heap you don’t expect to get a banana back. If you do things right you might get some tomatoes, strawberries, earthworms, and hedgehogs back. When you feed your children you don’t expect them to give you a meal back. You hope that what you get back are healthy and well-rounded adults who contribute to society. If your neighbour’s washing machine breaks and you do their laundry for a few days you don’t show up on their doorstep the following week with an equivalent amount of dirty clothes (plus some interest). When you pay for a book, or a degree², or a therapy session, you get back joy, peace of mind, knowledge, and education. And sometimes you transform your hard-work, time, and creativity into a paycheck.
Very often that transformation involves death. Sometimes the actual end of a life, as in the decomposition required for composting, and sometimes the end of an era, project, or phase of life.
But money isn’t designed to die. It is unique in this respect.