The Breakthrough Effect

Outrage and Optimism - Episode 186

A week ago on my regular commute back from French class, I tuned into the Outrage and Optimism podcast hosted by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson. For the uninitiated in the world of sustainability, Christiana Figueres was the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010 to 2016 and led the process that resulted in the Paris Agreement. Along with Tom Rivett-Carnac, she wrote my personal sustainability bible - The Future We Choose: A Stubborn Optimist's Guide to The Climate Crisis.

Episode 186 brought on guest speaker Kelly Levin Co-Director of the Systems Change Lab and Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change for the Bezos Earth Fund. Kelly discusses 'The Breakthrough Effect' report that was published at the World Economic Forum in Jan 2023 at Davos.

The Breakthrough Effect talks about 3 super leverage points. Super leverage points are tipping points that reduce carbon emissions within one sector and result in a domino effect by supporting faster changes in other parts of the economy.

What are the 3 tipping points?

1) Road Transportation: Supporting infrastructure, government policies such as zero emission vehicle mandates and falling costs make the transition to electric vehicles an alternative that supports both, manufacturers and consumers. Once a self-affirming feedback loop that outstrips the current petrol and diesel alternatives is established, it will result in a cascading effect that can support the decarbonization of other sectors that require cheap and clean energy.

2) Green Ammonia: Ammonia is a key component in the production of fertilizers. Green Ammonia is produced from hydrogen made from renewable energy. Switching to green ammonia will kickstart the transition to green hydrogen. This supports the transition out of fossil fuel usage in fertilizer production, and in turn will open the door for the use of green ammonia and green hydrogen as fuel in shipping and steel production.

3) Alternative Protein: Plant-based proteins are already less expensive and have a significantly smaller carbon footprint compared to animal based protein. Once we've figured out a way to mimic the taste and texture, and mass procurement from government organizations, schools and hospitals plant protein will have reached a tipping point where we can scale back on the millions of hectares of land needed for livestock farming. This in itself allows for reduced carbon emissions while reducing the need for deforestation and supporting the conservation of biodiversity.

What I loved about this was it got me thinking on what would be the tipping points in the healthcare sector's road to carbon-free care.

Maybe we aren't too far away from a reality where a patient is taken in via an e-ambulance, to an operating room that uses clinically-appropriate and safer anesthetic gases and maximizes the usage of reusable surgical instruments that are produced in a facility that is powered by green hydrogen and eventually finds themselves in recovery consuming a plant-protein patty with a side of greens that are grown on-site using green ammonia.  

[Sidebar: While the speech language pathologist in me is cringing at the run-on sentence in the paragraph above, the sustainability enthusiast in me is quite happy with the picture it paints]

Thanks for reading!