If you’re Gen Z, you’ve never known a world without existential countdown clocks. You’ve normalized living under what historian Adam Tooze calls the “polycrisis” — a convergence of threats where risk models no longer apply because every crisis is amplifying the others.
For this generation, climate breakdown, political fragility, and economic precarity aren’t future risks to be debated; they’re lived conditions. The failure isn’t a lack of knowledge. It is a lack of will by a system that benefited from growth while postponing accountability. Ruby Kessler-Karp, a Gen Z designer working in New York, captures what it feels like to come of age in this moment: “I came of age in a time of hope … we went to climate protests, attended rallies, and felt as though we were making a difference. What has come of it? Power-hungry politicians and oligarchs who would rather attend lavish parties than be of service to the collective good. It eats away at you. Grinds you down until you are forced to cope with the fact that unprecedented times are the new normal.”
Ruby’s exhaustion isn’t cynicism; it’s observational. Gen Z did what they were told would work — and the system accelerated in the wrong direction.
The Arsenal of Annihilation
To understand the dread, you have to look at the specifics. We are no longer in a simple Cold War. Nuclear brinkmanship has reentered daily life with Russia’s Status-6 Poseidon — autonomous nuclear drones designed to trigger radioactive tsunamis — and hypersonic missiles traveling at Mach 20 that render national defenses obsolete.
The latest IPCC and Climate Action Tracker assessments project we’re on a 2.6°C pathway above 20th-century averages — a trajectory that transforms Earth into a planet our agricultural systems, coastal cities, and freshwater supplies weren’t designed to inhabit.
Meanwhile, AI amplifies division, automates destruction, and destabilizes economies faster than regulators can comprehend.
Wealth inequality has reached levels that historian Walter Scheidel notes have only ever been corrected by the “Four Horsemen”: mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state collapse, or lethal pandemics. This isn’t a social justice “soft topic” — it’s a macroprudential warning. When inequality reaches this extreme, the correction mechanisms of history are catastrophic.
Diplomacy has failed. Every COP agreement has been bent by economic expedience. But there is one lever we haven’t fully pulled: the ~$500 trillion in global financial assets seeking returns.
Next Economics: The Portfolio as Planet Saver
What if every pension fund, endowment, sovereign wealth fund, and individual investor pivoted toward enterprises solving these existential risks? Not as “charity,” but as rational wealth preservation and creation.
Every dollar allocated to fossil fuel expansion is a vote for that 2.6°C world. But here’s the irony: The technologies needed to solve these existential risks could deliver the post-scarcity economy philosophers have dreamed about for centuries. Abundant clean energy, precision biology, artificial intelligence applied to optimization rather than extraction — these tools could enable universal prosperity within planetary boundaries.
But only if we fund them.
Tomorrow’s productive capacity emerges solely from today’s capital allocation. “Next Economics” isn’t about philanthropy or “feeling good.” It is the only functionally rational strategy left in a world that needs to exist for returns to matter.
The Thesis: Capital Allocation Is Civilization Building
Every investment is a vote for a specific future. We are currently misallocating the power of $500 trillion to fund our own demise. The companies solving climate risk, food insecurity, biological threats, grid instability, and ecological collapse represent the next productivity frontier. They are the keys to the Next Economy, which represents the greatest productivity frontier in human history:
- Replace the Obsolete: Move from fossil fuel expansion that threatens mass displacement → fund circular models (like Redwood Materials) that are higher-margin and resource-secure.
- Post-Scarcity Infrastructure + Energy: Invest in restorative, regenerative, and life-preserving technologies → extend the timeline on which prosperity is even possible.
- Precision Biology: Invest in sustainable proteins and materials at 10x lower environmental costs → stabilize food, resources, and geopolitical systems.
Erika Karp W85 (Image courtesy of Green Alpha Investments)
This isn’t “sustainable investing” as a subset of finance; it’s recognizing that the economy is a subset of Earth’s systems and that the companies funding this transition represent the economy’s next productivity frontier. They’re not competing against incumbents; they’re replacing systems that physics and biology have already declared obsolete.
Managing $500 trillion as if the polycrisis doesn’t exist — as if returns can be separated from the habitability of the planet — is civilizational suicide. The funds tracking fossil fuel indices while the world burns aren’t being “prudent.” They are sleepwalking toward a cliff while counting their steps as progress.
As Ruby reminds us:
“We may inherit a broken moment, but we also inherit the chance to repair it. Believing in a better world isn’t naive — it’s necessary.”
The Choice
So yes, pay attention. Feel the weight of these converging challenges. Let Ruby’s exhaustion wash over you and the dread sink in. But also recognize that despair is a luxury we can’t afford. The polycrisis is real. Yet the solutions are economically superior, technologically feasible, and desperately seeking capital.
Nihilism is only justified if we accept powerlessness. We aren’t powerless; we are just presently misallocating our power.
Divest from the problem. Invest in the solution. Tomorrow’s world — if there is one — will emerge from today’s portfolios. The question isn’t whether to hope. It’s whether to act while action still matters.
Erika Karp W85 is president of Green Alpha Investments, where she guides the firm’s strategy using more than 30 years of Wall Street experience in sustainable finance. She previously was the founder and CEO at Cornerstone Capital Group and held leadership roles at UBS and Credit Suisse. Karp is taking part in Wharton’s 4th Annual Impact Convening in January 2026.
Garvin Jabusch is chief investment officer at GAI, where he channels existential dread into portfolio construction. He cofounded Green Alpha to prove that competitive performance and derisking the world aren’t mutually exclusive — that the best returns come from investing in innovative solutions to civilizational threats, not their causes.
