What’s more venture capital than space lasers?

This week, 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 shoothe 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 both 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!

We're back on Friday for our last recording before we're on stage at Disrupt! Talk soon.

For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.

Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.