The Rishinheimer Issue

Greenlash is here. Climate Tech reacts. And is LK-99 the Holy Grail for the transition?

Image: created using Midjourney. (see below* for runner-up images)

Britain was the first amongst the G7 to prioritise decarbonisation - and created a hospitable environment for the climate tech sector. It took a decade to build the UK’s reputation as the template for advanced economies heading for Net Zero. It took just a month and one by-election for Greenlash - while the UN warns we’ve entered the age “global boiling”.

Within a head-snapping 72 hours, the UK government went from touting a successful bid to persuade TATA to invest £4bn in a battery gigafactory in Somerset to a hard rhetorical (so far) pivot against policies that would promote switching to the EVs that factory will power. As well as lowering the cost of carbon polluting, announcing hundreds of North Sea oil and gas exploration licenses in Scotland after arriving by private plane, and a positively ‘Cakeist’ approach linking all of that to carbon capture in a way that may make it harder to avoid CCS becoming a symbol of b…