Why climate storytelling should be “Supercool”

Interview with Josh Dorfman, co-founder and CEO of Supercool, a new publication highlighting unsung climate innovation.

“The low carbon future is underway, just underreported,” Josh Dorfman wrote in an announcement of a new sustainability-focused media brand called Supercool.

Supercool is part of a new crop of publications covering innovative solutions to climate change, along with the likes of Climate Tech VC, Grist, and Canary Media. When I came across Supercool’s launch, I found their editorial focus — which currently spans across a newsletter, website, and podcast — interesting and unique: it’s unabashedly optimistic, focused on cities and urban innovation, and highlights stories that prove that addressing climate change can also improve lives in other unexpected ways.

While Dorfman and team are optimistic about technology, they also highlight lesser known solutions that are really impactful but often implemented locally without mainstream media attention. Solutions like underground pneumatic tubes that automatically collect and manage trash, which are common in Europe but only now starting to spread to North America. Or their story about the Denver Public School district, which is not only reducing emissions, but saving millions by doing it.

I caught up with Dorfman, CEO and co-founder, to talk about why he started Supercool with his co-founder Aron Kressner, what they’re focused on, and the impact they’d like to have on the climate conversation. Dorfman has spent his career starting and building sustainability-focused companies: before Supercool, he started a company called Plantd building carbon negative construction materials, and ran a media brand called the Lazy Environmentalist. Our interview is edited for length and clarity.

3 key takeaways

1. Climate solutions can have unexpected side-benefits

2. Innovation doesn’t need to be high-tech

3. Cities are “living labs” for climate action

You have a long background in sustainability and in media. What inspired you to start Supercool, and why now?

When I stepped down as CEO of Plantd, I began exploring the climate innovation space, delving into policy and technology developments. I soon realized there was much more real-world progress happening than being reported. There are solutions that are genuinely exciting. We’re reducing carbon but doing it in ways that also benefit people and communities.

For example, I recently spoke with the principal of a net-zero energy school where absenteeism and suspension rates have dropped because students are now in a modern, beautiful building that also significantly reduces carbon emissions. The evidence became clear to me: the low-carbon future benefits not just the planet, but everyone living on it.

Much of this innovation is coming from unexpected places. From a storytelling perspective, that’s intriguing. Take Lincoln, Nebraska, where future-forward policies incentivize low-income housing renovations through energy efficiency upgrades. Building owners and residents both benefit while the city increases its tax revenue. The idea that this kind of progress — cutting carbon while enhancing our quality of life and well-being — is happening throughout the U.S. in towns not normally thought of as climate stalwarts is compelling to me.

When I started thinking about why this is happening now, I identified three key drivers. First, the Inflation Reduction Act is catalyzing nearly a trillion dollars of investment in green infrastructure. Second, hundreds of cities across the U.S. and globally have adopted climate action plans, turning cities into local laboratories for innovation. Third, technologies that have been in development for years, like electric school buses and sewer waste heat recovery systems, are finally reaching commercial scale.

Together, these factors are creating an accelerating moment for positive change. Telling these stories is the best way to bring more people into the climate movement and accelerate action. Showcasing solutions is far more effective than focusing on doom and gloom. And that’s a great opportunity.

What personal experiences or moments have shaped your views on climate action and media, and how have these experiences influenced the direction you’re taking with Supercool?

When I go to conferences and listen to a climate innovation talk — and I’ve been to a number over the last couple of years in the residential construction space — I can’t help but wonder: Really? You own this giant commercial building, for example, and you’ll only do something if it has a payback in three to five years, and you’re becoming just a little more energy efficient. That’s it? When you step back, all the technologies are here, and many have reached price parity. I just kept thinking: we can actually do this now if we really want to, if we’re ambitious enough.

So, to me, the solutions are mostly here, it’s just in the framing. How do I frame climate initiatives so people view them in their self-interest? I would argue that addressing climate change is definitely in our own interests because the co-benefits are so extraordinary. I started Supercool as a vehicle for accelerating the type of change that I want to see. Because I think the stories sell themselves, and I also think that there’s always a captivating human interest story to be told when an innovator figures out how to develop, deploy, and scale a solution that cuts carbon and makes life better for others in the process.

What’s interesting to me about your editorial approach is that it’s centered around the idea that many climate solutions can also improve our day-to-day lives, even for people who aren’t as concerned about the environment and just want a better product or service. Could you share more on that?

Here’s another example. We just did a podcast on autonomous lawn mowers, focusing on a company called Greener. At first I thought that it felt a little quirky, but then I started digging into it. Lawn maintenance, gardening equipment, all of these gas-powered mowers are responsible for four to five percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That’s twice as much as U.S. air travel. What I found really interesting was that Greener, with its “autonomous mowers-as-a-service” model, figured out how to cut carbon, delight homeowners and landscapers, and take this really fragmented industry and actually put hundreds—and soon to be thousands—of these autonomous robots in our physical spaces. But the 90 percent carbon reduction from going electric versus gas-powered only works because Adam Sloan, Greener’s founder, figured out a great business model and built a better service.

These are solutions that aren’t just better for the environment, but also provide a better user experience, a better customer experience, and are just easier for all involved. If you’re a landscaper and someone says, “I’ve got a solution that’s going to cut your carbon emissions by 90 percent”, they wouldn’t care. Instead they’re going to ask: how much does it cost? How much money can I make? Does this free me up to do more? Can I get more clients? Can I do higher-value tasks? The climate and carbon benefit has to be baked into the product or service, but it’s never the selling point. This is a core philosophy for me. My experience has been that if you’re only pitching the climate benefits of your product or service, it always stays very niche and small. 

Supercool has a focus on cities and climate action plans at the local level. What inspired this focus?

I’m seeing a lot of climate innovation at the city level. For example, I came across a podcast called City Climate Corner. It’s wonky, policy-driven, and hosted by two climate action policy folks in Minnesota. They interview people working in city government, mostly in the U.S. They went to Ann Arbor, for example, and interviewed the city’s Sustainability & Innovations Director. They learned how Ann Arbor turned their waste treatment plant from a cost center into a profit center through some innovative programs. Two people in Ann Arbor’s planning department also figured out the financial capital stack to introduce green hydrogen in their community drawing on federal, state, and local incentives and grants. I’m thinking about the billions being invested in green hydrogen in Silicon Valley, where I’m not quite sure how many taps have been turned on yet. And I thought, “this is incredible.” So that started me down this path of looking at what’s happening at the local level and getting excited about a lot of unsung innovation.

The other thing you see at the city level that interests me is that’s where the real impact on people’s lives occurs. What I find fascinating about mayors and city governments is that there’s no possibility of pawning off responsibility to someone else. They’re responsible, they must take care of their citizens and local residents. They don’t have a choice—that’s the job. And they manage so many of the systems that influence people’s lives. So, often it’s much easier to move from idea or concept into action at the city level than at the state or federal level. If cities say, “It’s our responsibility to cut carbon and adapt and become more resilient to a changing climate because that’s how we meet the needs of our citizens,” then it’s much more likely to happen. So, I really do think cities are like living laboratories for effective climate action today.

Looking ahead, where do you see Supercool in the next few years, especially in terms of what impact you’d like to have on the conversation around climate change?

We want to shift the conversation from crisis to solutions. But more than that, we want people to believe that they have agency over their future. That climate change can be solved, and the biggest reason to do it is not to avert catastrophe but to shape a future that is better than today based on the things we individually and collectively value most. If we can move the conversation in that direction, I’d consider that impact.