Tom Chi is an inventor, entrepreneur, and investor with a deep knowledge of astrophysics. He was a founder and executive at GoogleX working with autonomous driving and AI when he first became alarmed by climate change. A coral reef near his Hawaii home died in less than eight weeks. Mass bleaching and reef collapse took away the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, every color of the rainbow diminished to gray and brown.

Tom explains that climate change is not gradual but instead it is marked by extreme fluctuations. Its the outliers, the six degrees hotter in summer and 2 degrees cooler in winter as was the case at his reef, 122 degree heat in British Columbia, and multiple thousand year events taking place in less than a decade, all dangerous outliers. Clearly the Earth's natural systems are out of equilibrium. Tom believes that we have messed up on climate change communications. They are centered on average temperature changes that are "papering over" the worst parts of climate destabilization.

At that moment, Tom decided to give up his work at GoogleX -- the best job he'd ever had -- to work on climate solutions. The awakening spurred him to dig into the source of the death in his neighborhood. And he learned that it could happen to entire world, damage that might take 10 - 20 million years to resolve. He considered taking a sabbatical. But he knew the lift was large enough: Clearly he could not effectively work on this in his spare time.

So Tom travelled the world to the front lines of ecological damage, to glaciers calving at alarming rates, rivers running dry, Southeastern Asian rainforests destroyed. He witnessed communities where people live on $2 dollars a day, and how that links with ecosystem destruction like slash and burn in the Amazon. He was digging into the root causes of global ecological problems and found some 60 issues that need attention. Rather than being lost in the abstraction of destruction of our ecosystems, he talks about the need to work locally. "Specificity is the friend of innovation." The more specific you are in addressing problems, the faster you succeed, he explained.

At One Ventures, Tom brings his tech savvy to influence investors to support new innovations, to stabilize them into high-yield manufacturing cycles... getting technologies into a global business setting to be profitable. He and his colleague are disrupting those sectors that do the most damage. One of At One's investments is with Factor 2 that is developing a geothermal technology that uses CO2 as the working fluid, replacing water with far greater efficiency.

Ted and Tom talk about Tom's new book that will be released in February titled "Climate Capital: Investing in Tools for a Regenerative Future." In it he lays out the world's biggest challenges -- climate destabilization, economic destabilization due to AI, and geopolitical instability. He then addresses these with his 4 Cs... critical thinking , creativity, compassion, and community.

Sometimes the problems at hand are so big that they are abstract. One of is book's key directives for all of us to repair our own backyard bioregions. He presents inspiring, localized stories... like the reemergence of the Nene birds in Hawaii. It was a small group of people there that spearheaded a captive breeding program that turned that species' decline around. A lone biologist in San Francisco focused on a native species of butterflies, worked with local botanical garden, and created an ideal habitat that rebounded that rebounded population. He stated that you've got to get past national headlines and get specific to get results. That is where we have the power to change the course of history. Tom works directly on technologies that are restoring mangroves with drones, robots that effectively replant coral reefs and sea grasses.
 
Tom ends with a thoughtful response to Ted's question on his work-life balance. He explains that his form of relaxation and best thinking comes from time in his hammock in Hawaii, away from devices. A little swaying motion triggers the vestibular system. He believes that if you want to be less anxious about the future, get into the process of creating the future you want. The people that will make it are "the builders." They make progress every day, not at a newsworthy pace, but progress that is accretive and additive. This is grounding, a salve for what people are struggling with.