E46: Cows and Other Gigaton-Sized Problems with Ryan Panchadsaram

We talk a lot about solutions, but this week, we're taking a step back to look at where we're making progress, and where have more to do.

This week on the podcast, I’m thrilled to welcome Ryan Panchadsaram, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, a longtime technologist, and a former Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the US. We’re taking a step back from individual solutions to look at how much (and in some cases, how little) progress we’ve made toward bending the curve of a warming planet and reducing our net global carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

Ryan Panchadsaram, super smart, accomplished, and delightful person. Courtesy: Speed & Scale

A little background here: Ryan is the co-author, along with clean tech investor John Doerr, of a book called Speed and Scale, which is billed as “an action plan for the planet.”

The book is based on one of John’s longtime obsessions—a goal-setting methodology known as OKRs, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. The book, then, is an attempt to set a super specific goal: go from 59 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, and to get halfway there by 2030. To achieve that goal, the book identifies 10 categories to tackle, each with its own set of subcategories.

Ok, so that was 2021. But the news this week is that the team has just released a comprehensive update to its Speed & Scale tracker, quantifying progress, sounding the alarm about some that have slipped into “Code Red” territory, and cheering some big successes in others. Ryan and I talked about some of the big wins, like EV adoption, some big misses, like methane and coal, and some new and more specific additions, like uh, cows, which as a category, account for a full 3 gigatons of GHG emissions every year.

You remember that episode we did on going vegan? Start with beef and dairy and you’re already a heck of a lot of the way there. Credit: Speed & Scale Tracker

The big categories are:

• Electrify Transportation

• Decarbonize the Grid

• Fix Food

• Protect Nature

• Clean Up Industry

• Remove Carbon

• Win Politics and Policy

• Turn Movements into Action

• Innovate

• Invest

This is where I should jump in and say that words can’t even express how satisfying I find this exercise. First, I’m a big fan of measurement, even when it’s time-consuming and expensive and executives complain about the time they have to spend on it.

Second, the way to tackle a big problem is to break that problem into its component parts and then get to work on those parts. It also means you can spread the work around to the people and industries and companies and investors who have the right expertise for the right problem. The tracker like my dream project, with specific metrics, actions, articles about solutions in each category … you can spend days in it. (Yes, I’m this much of a nerd. What, you’re surprised?)

But ok fine, if you don’t want to spend days on the tracker, you can get the highlights in the podcast this week. Please listen, subscribe, and leave a rating or review if you’ve got a minute. Thanks for reading and see you next week!