Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future - Hardcover

by Tom Chi (Author)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Framework to design a real, sustainable, and non-harmful approach to our global economy

Seeing economics for the design discipline it truly is, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, leverages the decades of experience of Tom Chi as a physicist and designer to offer a realistic, grounded perspective on the fact that our current economic systems simply don't work with our world's physical reality in the long-term. The comprehensive, holistic approach in this book cuts through the noise of so many conversations happening at the intersection of climate change, economics, sustainability, and our global future, providing insights on:

• Possibilities for our collective future using science and hard evidence, avoiding the extremes of unbridled optimism or complete doom and gloom
• The 4Cs--Critical Thinking, Creativity, Compassion, and Community--as a framework to design a sustainable, non-harmful approach to our global economy
• Using nature, the best-designed system out there, instead of economic pseudoscience, as a guide to move beyond fear for our future to a place of empowerment for individuals and communities alike

Part toolkit, part history, and part demonstration, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future provides tangible strategies for venture capitalists, sophisticated individual investors, pragmatic policy wonks, and ardent environmental activists to create a sustainable economic future that no longer destroys the planet.

Front Jacket

Our economy was not designed with Earth's physical limits in mind--and it shows. Leaders across finance, policy, and activism face a tangle of trade-offs: decarbonize fast without destroying livelihoods, invest boldly without fueling extractive cycles, and separate real breakthroughs from hopeful hype. What principles should guide capital when the stakes are planetary? How do we replace fear and fatalism with practical levers that scale? Climate action doesn't just need bigger checks--it needs a better design brief.

In Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, physicist, product designer, and business leader Tom Chi reimagines economics as a design discipline rooted in natural laws. Chi introduces his 4Cs Framework--Critical Thinking, Creativity, Compassion, Community--demonstrating how to allocate capital that heals instead of depletes. The result is a grounded, evidence-based playbook that avoids both techno-utopian wish casting and doom-scroll despair.

Equal parts toolkit, history, and instruction manual, Climate Capital translates the physics of living systems into investable theses. Readers will learn how to stress-test assumptions with first principles (Critical Thinking), create and test in the real world and avoid analysis paralysis (Creativity), expand time horizons and align incentives around real human needs (Compassion), and build resilient ecosystems where innovation compounds across networks (Community). From "design for disassembly" to "composting capitalism," the book offers tangible examples--from reefs and soil to software and supply chains--showing what we have now and what we still need to unlock a just, durable economy.

Climate Capital is a collection of insightful, science-anchored theses capable of grounding successful venture capital and investing strategies. If you allocate resources--or aspire to influence those who do--this is your blueprint for investing in a future that works with, not against, the planet.

Back Jacket

PRAISE FOR Climate Capital

"This is the rare book that translates complex climate solutions into actionable practice. Chi doesn't just challenge conventional thinking; he enables the work of creating the future."
-- BOLA OLUSANYA, Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

"Tom Chi is singular in his ability to think across disciplines and scale solutions that match the complexity of our ecological predicament--from prototype to planetary scale. Climate Capital is a masterclass in systems thinking, deep pragmatism, and visionary investing."
--TRISTAN HARRIS, Co-Founder, Center for Humane Technology

"Chi cuts through the noise to highlight what it takes to build and scale climate solutions. Climate Capital is an innovator's roadmap for building a sustainable future that will define jobs, economies, and resilience in the decades ahead."
--JEFF JOHNSON, General Partner and Head of Energy and Resilience, B Capital

"Tom Chi understands deeply that the conflicts of our world don't have to be destructive. Just as my home, Taiwan, was formed by the friction of tectonic plates, this book demonstrates how to transform the friction into fuel for cooperation."
--AUDREY TANG, Taiwan's Cyber Ambassador and 1st Digital Minister

"As our #1 rated mentor at Unreasonable Group, Chi has enabled a community of hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world to scale innovations that provide the foundation for a regenerative economy. This book is a treasure of tools that move beyond why--to how."
--CHRISTIANA MUSK, Chairwoman, Unreasonable Group

"Beautifully written with meaningful tech insights by a master!"
--DAN GOLDIN, 9th NASA Administrator

"Tom Chi's book, Climate Capital, grabbed me not just as well-researched but imbued with an abundance of relevant personal experience, practical cognitive tools and their application to the future of our government, our jobs, and our biosphere. Herein lies not blind optimism but a potent roadmap for building wisdom to enable 'composting of late-stage capitalism.'"
-- GEORGE CHURCH, Co-Founder of Colossal Biosciences, and Professor, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Author Biography

Tom Chi studies human development issues with social entrepreneurs around the world, rebooting the fundamental frameworks of entrepreneurship itself. He was Head of Product Experience at Google X, helping to lead the development of technologies like Google Glass and Google's self-driving cars. Tom is the founding partner of At One Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on helping humanity become a net positive to nature by reinventing the industrial economy.