Just F*&%ing Start — We have time to figure out the tricky stuff before the end

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10x Curiosity

3 min readDec 10, 2021

Sometimes it is best to just get going

Reid Hoffman says starting a new venture is about jumping of a cliff and then assembling the airplane on the way down. This captures the time limited nature of a venture before it succeeds or fails, but also implies a fatalistic end that comes with failure — you die. For many of life’s journeys, both personal and societal — the cliff you are jumping off has enough time for you to be confident of figuring it out before premature death!

I have previously written about managing significant low probability but high consequence downside risk. You should do this aggressively. And nowhere does this seem as relevant as when thinking about climate change and the move to a carbon free energy future.

You realize that the tail-end consequences — the low-probability, high-impact events — are all that matter. They’re all you should focus on.
Morgan Housel “The Three Sides of Risk

A lot of the debate about the transition at the moment is stuck around the phrase “the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow” implying that a move to renewables will prove the death to society as we know it. This utterly fails to appreciate that the move to a decarbonised grid happens by constructing wind and solar (and other) infrastructure. Construction which takes time. By virtue of this, moving towards the new world itself will take time. Time for us smart people to figure out any kinks along the way.

“How much of this decision do I have to make right now”

Margaret Hefernan challenges her business leaders. Just as it makes no sense worrying now how our 4 year old kindergarten daughter is going to pass her 4th year uni finals, it makes even less sense worrying about how a grid that currently has under 10% renewable energy feeding into it globally, will cope when it is 100%. In the 30+ years it is going to take to get there, trust that it is a solvable problem that will be solved!

Highlights Kingsmill Bond —( The unstoppably good news about clean energy | Canary Media)

There are no fundamental limits to the spread of zero-carbon energy. There’s more than enough renewable energy, accessible with today’s technology, to supply the world’s energy needs.
Not only do we know how to get there, it is where we are headed, based on current market and technology trends. The key to succeeding on climate change is simply accelerating what is already underway, pushing a rolling boulder a little faster.

Whilst it absolutely makes sense to premortem any major change and work as much as possible to avoiding identified risks, you need to be very careful that the analysis of these hypothesised risks doesn’t stop you from starting. Especially when the do nothing scenario poses existential risks.

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Get in touch… — https://tomconnor.me/

Just F*&%ing Start — We have time to figure out the tricky stuff before the end

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Written by Tom Connor