What’s more venture capital than space lasers?

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Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday show, in which we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and unpack the rest. This week, we have something a little special for you: We brought TechCrunch+ senior climate reporter Tim De Chant on to talk climate tech, hardware breakthroughs and why we have a whole stage this year at Disrupt focused on sustainability.

On that last point, perhaps you have gone outside recently. Extreme weather around the world, warming oceans, fires — it’s a mess out there. That’s the bad news. The good news is that a number of startups are working hard to build new technologies that could soothe our struggling planet. And perhaps make a lot of money in the process.

Here’s what we got into on the show:

• Climate tech venture capital activity. Why aren’t we seeing more capital despite some interesting activity.
• The question of fusion. Is it really around the corner (this time)?
• Why we’re excited about potential hardware breakthroughs, even if LK-99 was not the real deal.
• Dread about our changing world.

Tim is not only a great journalist, he’s also very good at the whole science thing, so he was a treat to talk to!