(CNB) INVESTORS, FOUNDERS AND EXECUTIVES

Mike Schroepfer, chief technology officer of Facebook Inc., listens during the Wall Street Journal Tech Live global technology conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 21, 2019. The event brings together investors, founders, and executives to foster innovation and drive growth within the tech industry. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

When longtime Facebook executive Mike Schroepfer left his job as Meta’s chief technology officer earlier this year, he said he would spend his new free time and energy focusing on addressing the climate crisis. 

That decision makes him one of a growing number of tech workers who are turning their attention, time and skills to climate change.

Schroepfer started giving to climate philanthropically in early 2020 by funding basic scientific research through his organization, Additional Ventures. There wasn’t a single “aha!” moment that made the tech executive decide he wanted to try to use his resources to contribute to responding to climate change. It was a combination of several factors that collectively pushed him over the tipping point to decide to act.

“Something flipped in 2020. I am not sure what, I think it might be the age of my kids,” Schroepfer told CNBC in a video interview on Wednesday. (He declined to be any more specific about his children or family for the sake of privacy.) He imagined a hypothetical future where his children might look at him and ask, ”‘Dad, what were you doing? Why didn’t you try to help?’”

Also, climate change has started to affect his and his family’s daily life.

“We live in California, and we now have a thing called wildfire season, and smoke season where we check the AQI every day before we go out,” he said, referring to the air quality index, a measurement of air pollution and its potential impact on human health. “And we now have HEPA filters and masks. It’s a real health risk for people immediately. And wildfires happen — but they’re a lot worse, because of drought. And that is directly linked to climate change.”

So in 2020, Schroepfer started making grants for climate-related scientific research through Additional Ventures, a philanthropic organization he set up. He educated himself about climate change, talked to people who knew more than he does about the issue and hired people to do research for him and get him up to speed.

One of the hardest and most critical parts of deciding to take action in responding to climate change, for Schroepfer and others he has spoken to, is figuring out how their skillset could be most helpful.

“The good news, bad news is, there’s a lot of options. And so that’s good news. But it then becomes quickly overwhelming. It’s sort of like the menu that’s way too large. And so you just can’t choose what to do, right?” Schroepfer told CNBC. “Because what we’re talking about is changing almost everything in the economy — transport, food, everything we do, buildings, everywhere we live is going to change. And that’s good and exciting, but it’s also sort of overwhelming, but it does mean, we need everyone.”

Schroepfer is staying on at Meta as a senior fellow, working on recruiting and artificial intelligence, among other things. But a lot of his attention has already turned toward new ventures.

“As an R&D executive, I’ve overseen lots of things from building data centers, to building an AI Lab to, scaling products to billions of people. And part of what you get good at is trying to understand the landscape and where the opportunities are,” Schroepfer said.

For his first climate research, Schroepfer and the Additional Ventures team are focused on studying the potential of storing carbon dioxide in the ocean.

Carbon removal is an area of the climate technology and innovation landscape that Schroepfer sees as desperately necessary and very far behind where it needs to be.

“We need to be taking about 10 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere every year. And we’re doing hardly anything,” Schroepfer said. “And it’s very expensive to do it. And so we need more money to do it. And we need to technology and solutions that are scalable, and cheaper.”

Meta was one of a collection of companies, led by Stripe, and also including Google and McKinsey, to join a $925 million commitment to pay for removing carbon as a way of jump-starting the nascent industry and giving innovators in the space some certainty that there will be demand for the technology they’re building. But that, he said, is just a start, and is “1,000 times less than what needs to be sent spent annually,” he said. CNBC - link - the brilliant Catherine Clifford - link - more like this (carbon capture) - link - more like this (technology to ecology) - link