Fund lobbying and political campaigns for candidates who support climate change mitigation efforts. YC will have no impact unless they get governments (with resources orders of magnitude greater than that of YC) set in the right direction.
No startup is going to solve climate change. The scale of the problem is simply too large. You need public policy to internalize the externalities of carbon emissions.
Then get out there and support Tesla and your local wind turbine/PV solar installer/commercial developer. Those are who are driving out fossil fuel and petroleum use at scale (BYD is arguably doing quite a bit of that with electric busses, but as a Chinese company, that’ll be a harder hill to climb in the current political climate). You must destroy demand for CO2 producing activities, and renewables and EVs do just that.
There is no need for a startup to deploy EV chargers at homes, condos, apartments, and public facilities. This requires community involvement instead, as there is little if any profit to be realized from the activity. But this is crucial for EV uptake. Someone has to do the legwork (I am working on automation for this, but alas, there are only so many hours in a day).
The tech is already proven. It’s all up to public policy now to nudge people in the right direction (renewables, EVs, carbon offsets for anything else where you absolutely cannot avoid CO2 emissions).
No startup is going to solve climate change. The scale of the problem is simply too large. You need public policy to internalize the externalities of carbon emissions.