Thinking in Ecosystems: From Climate to Planetary Resilience Tech | Yanir Seroussi – AI/ML Success ArchitectThe popularity of climate action and climate tech seems to have declined in the past few years.<br>Potential causes abound: from “green” activists shifting focus to Middle Eastern geopolitics, through the changing policy and investment landscape in the US, to AI swallowing the attention of techies and non-techies alike.<br>But whatever the causes are, climate change is still happening, with 2026 on track to join 2023, 2024, and 2025 as the hottest years on record.<br>Since switching my career focus to climate tech in 2022, I’ve had my own ups and downs in my thinking and involvement in the space.<br>With my current positioning, I landed on “helping climate tech founders ship AI/ML solutions that support multi-million dollar growth goals”.<br>However, I remain somewhat uncomfortable with the climate tech framing.<br>The top reasons are: (1) the association with narrow-minded and exclusionary activism; and (2) missing other important aspects of ecosystem resilience.<br>This post summarises the main trends I’m seeing and outlines a path forward, which may be helpful to others in the space.<br>Personally, I’ll stick with the “climate tech” framing while it remains useful and legible for others, but I now sit more in the “planetary resilience tech” camp.<br>It’s on the lengthy and exploratory side, so here’s a quick guide based on your interests:<br>Climate activism, extremist shifts, and antisemitism<br>Climate tech’s definition and its declining trendiness<br>Electrotech and resilience tech<br>Applying a personal lens to resilience tech<br>Climate activism and its exclusionary associations#<br>Earlier this year, I attended Climate Action Week in Sydney.<br>In between sessions, I noticed freshly-distributed posters and a protest march forming.<br>What was the protest about?<br>Being the middle of Climate Action Week, you’d think it’d be about climate.<br>Alas, we’re not in 2019 any more.<br>The protest was about the one aspect of Middle Eastern geopolitics that has captured the world’s attention since 2023: Nominally “for Palestine”, it was yet another anti-Israel/anti-Zionist protest.<br>I found this to be symbolic of what had happened to a segment of the climate movement in recent years: Many climate activists have moved away from advocating for universal causes to allying with sectarian extremists.<br>Examples abound, but one that particularly sticks in my mind is Greta Thunberg chanting “crush Zionism” back in November 2023, as she was formerly the poster child for youth calling for climate action.<br>Even before 2023, the word climate was already a turn-off for some people due to the politicisation of the underlying science and necessary action.<br>With prominent climate activists and nominally “green” parties turning their attention to anti-Zionism, climate action or “climate justice” has become even more divisive and exclusionary.<br>This is because anti-Zionism that denies Jews their right to self-determination is seen by many as antisemitic, i.e., biased against or hateful of Jews.<br>I subscribe to the view that many of the hardcore activists are behaving antisemitically, as they never call for peace or reaffirm Israel’s right to exist.<br>As an Australian of Israeli-Jewish background, this feels like a more immediate existential threat than climate change, especially after the October 7 and Bondi attacks.<br>But even if you disagree on what counts as antisemitism, you may still agree that there is now a strong association between anti-Zionist activism and climate activism – and that it’s not great for climate.<br>Hence my search for a better term.<br>Changes in surface air temperature from 1973 to 2023. Source: Wikipedia.<br>What is climate tech anyway?#<br>As the figure above shows, climate change is a global issue that transcends geopolitical and ethnic boundaries.<br>That’s partly what jars me about calls for “climate justice” that elevate certain nationalities and ethnicities while excluding others.<br>But that’s what also attracts me to climate tech: Advancing technological solutions that are cheaper and better than the technology that causes climate change side-steps political bickering.<br>This is already happening with tech like rooftop solar, which has record uptake in my home state of Queensland thanks to favourable economics – even by hardcore conservatives who don’t care about climate change.<br>When it comes to defining climate tech, I still stand behind my thoughts from 2022:<br>What is climate tech? Good question. To me, defining it is somewhat reminiscent of attempts to define data science, which I’ve tackled in posts from 2014 to 2018. In the same way that data science encompassed things that some people have been doing for decades, climate tech is giving a new name to existing...