What are your projects?

Hello,

Here's a quick note in the wake of the U.S. presidential election. It occurred to me that I have a certain responsibility to address it, as I am an 'audience-haver' and someone to whom many of you look for occasional opinion and information on energy and environmental-related stuff.

Here's what I have for now. For reasons elaborated below, the rest of this year's Keep Cool coverage will predominantly entail a 'getting on with the work' attitude that isn't particularly political.

♡ If you find this work valuable, you can support it here. I put a lot of time into it. ♡

OPINION

In a conversation with a dear friend at dinner over the weekend, she related an anecdote about another friend's reactions to the U.S. presidential election. The person in question simply replied that they had already long not viewed themselves as involved in the "American Project."

I know many people, including people applying themselves assiduously to solutions to energy and environmental problems, who, from the outside looking in, seem to be quite excited about continuing to work on whatever the "American Project" means to them (even or in some cases, especially, in the wake of the election). I know many people who, from the outside looking in, seem decidedly opposed to whatever the "American Project" means to them.

I’m at peace with them all. I'd be hard-pressed to define whether and when any one person has an inherent obligation to any project, especially those they did not necessarily choose for themselves.

I do not know whether I consider myself to be working on the "American Project." The reason this opening anecdote speaks to me is because it hit home that I'm not abundantly clear on what "projects" I am working on, at least professionally, and which ones I decidedly do not want to work on or support. Amidst the current fracturing of perspectives and worldviews I perceive in many of my communities (a trend that has been unfurling for some time), I see a significant opportunity. I think it's a great time to articulate what our projects are and aren't.

What are my projects?

Fortunately, I have become considerably clearer in recent years about what my 'personal' projects are. I often come home to the fact that my most foundational projects start, well, close to home. They include my physical body and my health, my person—as understood as a complex spiritual, emotional, comfort-seeking being—and my friends and family, all of whom are just as complex as I am. My projects then expand to slightly larger though still local communities, networks of professional peers, and my literal neighbors. Then, the scope of my projects can expand further to include ever-broadening concentric circles of other communities—reaching as far as big nets like "all the beings on Earth."

Within all that, my capacity contingent, I occasionally lift my gaze, let my eyes adjust to the light, and consider what else to take on, especially what might feel energizing and fulfilling. This invites me to consider 'professional' projects, or how I apply my crafts, knowledge, and unique perspective.

This is where things get murkier for me. I have worked on this "project," Keep Cool (for example), for quite some time, and have variously defined it as 'about' "climate tech" or "telling underpriced stories at the intersection of climate & business." I think those definitions were always too amorphous and ill-defined. I am not sure they serve me, nor necessarily you, sufficiently. I have no interest in projecting that conclusion onto you, though perhaps it resonates.

Hence, it's time for me to redefine the professional 'projects' my work ladders up to.

Where the attention flows

As I have said before, where we place our attention matters. What I choose to write about matters as it's inherently a form of recommendation to you as a reader and a choice of how I use(d) my time. What you choose to read and engage with is a use of your time and invariably impacts the space between your ears, your body, and your soul (at least in my opinion), in conscious, unconscious, and other mysterious ways. Here’s how I said it differently a year ago:

Our attention is, at one level, sacred. At another level, it is also a commodity, like oil or soybeans. Many of the world's largest companies (at least in terms of market capitalization) make a large portion of their revenues and profits by selling ads or otherwise harvesting your attention. The phrase “to pay attention” has a certain linguistic logic to it, after all.

It can be worth ‘paying’ attention to what's happening at the highest levels of international and national policymaking, as these are big levers that steer, for better or for worse, human society's relationship with the planet and Earth's climate systems. The election results in the U.S. last week, across both the presidential election and countless other elections, will shape America's orientation towards and influence on the energy transition, decarbonization efforts, and much more for years to come. The U.S. being the world's largest economy and a bastion of innovation—whether in technological terms or policymaking—means where the U.S. goes also impacts the rest of the world considerably.

Paying attention to all that can be your project!

But it doesn't have to be.

I am, at present, not personally interested in making many predictions about what President-elect Trump and his new Administration will or will not do. That is definitely not my project right now. Similarly, I am opting out of covering things like the COP 29 conference, at least for the most part. As I wrote on Sunday, while I'm sure good work will be done there, I'm skeptical of voluntary global pledges, which are often not met with the requisite and oft-promised action and investment after their announcements. The conference is also being hosted in Azerbaijan, a country that hasn't applied itself to environmental issues meaningfully and that launched a military offensive into the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region last year, displacing 100,000+ ethnic Armenians.

Covering that is also not my project right now.

The net-net

Instead of the post-election post-mortem or COP 29, I am more interested in getting clear on what my professional projects are and aren't, as this will define where I direct my attention (and yours). While this is, of course, all part of an iterative, lifelong endeavor, it will be a very focused one of mine in the short to medium term.

It will take some time. Doing it methodically and with input from folks like yourself is the ethos of it. Projects needn't be 'always on' either. They probably shouldn't be. We need rest. I sure do. When we don't rest, we get distracted, dysregulated, and dissociate, often as a sort of safety noise cancellation function to block out the attendant, ambient, omnipresent drone of distraction inherent to much of modern society.

That said, I remain quite excited to explore the ways I can support you all in your projects, ranging from continuing to cover 'cool' businesses in these pages to curating information that's ideally useful and more. Some of what's likely required to bring me into greater alignment with my intuition, desire, and ambition will involve offering more specific, well-researched, individual actions that move the needle on things that otherwise dysregulate systems (like the Earth's climate system) that we all rely on. TBD.

As always, you're welcome to hit me up to discuss by responding to this email.

Appreciate you,

— Nick